Sarafur

Kuna's Tail III was a small terrestrial planet that occupied the third orbital position around the Kuna's Tail system's yellow star. It lay within the Outer Moddell systems area of the Moddell sector, one of the subsectors making up the Inner Zuma Region within the Outer Rim Territories' Zuma sector. The planet was connected via hyperlane to the Kuna's Fist system. The Kuna's Tail system was so named since it formed a part of the Kuna constellation, as seen and named by the Ayrou species of the planet Maya Kovel. In the Moddell sector, Kuna's Tail III was known as Sarafur.

Sarafur had standard gravity, a breathable Type I atmosphere, and a temperate-to-hot climate. The planet was tidally locked in its orbit around its sun, with the same parts of its surface always facing the star. The border between the light and dark regions of Sarafur featured dusty and forbidding landscapes and was the only inhabitable part of the planet. Sarafur's surface was covered in desolate and dangerous desert. Certain astronomers theorized that Sarafur had become tidally locked so rapidly that the planet's sea—which eventually gave way to the Krasho Salt Rifts—had evaporated in as quickly as several years or even just months.

At one point, Sarafur served as a colony world for the Killiks, a species of hive-minded insectoids that originated on the Core Worlds planet Alderaan. The Killiks were transplanted off their homeworld by the powerful Celestials, and ultimately both species disappeared from the known galaxy by 30,000 BBY. Between approximately that date and 25,200 BBY, Sarafur fell under the control of the Infinite Empire of the Rakata species.

When a Killik Sith warrior fled persecution on the Core Worlds planet Alsakan long before Humans settled there between 27,000 BBY and 26,000 BBY, he took up refuge on Sarafur. After his death, the Sith's tomb became a site strong in the dark side of the Force, and his arrival on the desert world came to be the subject of an old Shistavanen legend. At some point, the Alsakani dark side adept Jilst Bindalin learned of the legend and located the tomb. After he stole a certain artifact, Bindalin hired a Shistavanen starship captain to transport him and the artifact to Sarafur, and the Alsakani was never seen again after arriving there.

Around 3643 BBY, an individual affiliated with one of the sides in the then-ongoing struggle between the Galactic Republic and the reconstituted Sith Empire sent a companion to Sarafur to investigate the long-abandoned Killik nests there. The companion discovered the belongings of long-lost Joiners—individuals who had been assimilated into the Killik hive mind—as well as a quantity of old, crystallized membrosia, a type of Killik-produced liquor.

Eventually, rumors circulating in various cantinas began claiming that either—or both—of the two artifacts known as the Tessents were located on Sarafur. In reality, they were on the Moddell sector worlds Ast Kikorie and Vasha. According to the rumors, at least one of the Tessents had come into the possession of a crime boss or a spice lord who resided somewhere in Sarafur's ruins. Occasionally, treasure hunters instead related stories about either of the artifacts supposedly falling into the hands of Sarafur's grave-robbers or coming to rest in a crypt of an alien ruler that was in turn located beneath the hideout of one of the planet's crime lords. Although Doctor Follnor Callat, a xenoarchaeologist interested in obtaining the Tessent originating on Alsakan, was not aware of the legend concerning the arrival of the Killik Sith on Sarafur, he did know of another tale about a dark side spirit that resided in the planet's ruins.

At some point by 3 ABY, the rogue assassin droid LC-Zed, who had fled from the neighboring Spar sector after going on a killing spree there, sought temporary refuge from pursuing law enforcement forces on Sarafur, where it arrived aboard a stolen shuttle and subsequently sought the means to repair the starship in order to travel offworld again. Around the same time, the Vashan Liberation Force, a group of approximately twenty Vashans intent on organizing a revolt against the Ayrou control over their homeworld Vasha, was formed on Sarafur. In addition, a group of treasure hunters also arrived on the planet around that time while searching for the Tessents. The group encountered the shipjacker Tershan and his crew and explored the Killik Sith's tomb, where it discovered a Sith holocron.

At one point, Sarafur was inhabited by a sentient species that had gone extinct eons prior to the reign of the Galactic Empire. The planet was also inhabited by members of the Killik species once, although they ultimately abandoned the world. By the time of the Yuuzhan Vong War, which began in 25 ABY, Sarafur was home to 150,000 individuals of various species. Although Sarafur's population had access to space-level technology and the planet served as a shadowport, it had no imports or exports of note. It had no overarching government and was a lawless backwater world where death was a common occurrence.

Various bands of criminals made Sarafur their primary base of operations. Among the groups that resided the longest in Sarafur's ruins were the outlaw armorers and weapons technicians known as the Xal 3 Armorers' Confederacy. After being displaced from the adjacent Ablajeck sector by a feud with other outlaw techs, the group led by the Trandoshan Kallukoras established a presence on Sarafur. Another gang operating out of the desert planet was the Kintan Gunrunners, a group of weapons smugglers known throughout Hutt Space, the Corporate Sector, and other areas of the galaxy. Primarily composed of Niktos of various subspecies, the gang employed—especially on Sarafur—members of other species well-adapted for the planet's desert heat, such as Kamarians, Twi'leks, and Weequays. The Gunrunners section based on Sarafur was led by the Kajain'sa'Nikto lieutenant Tu'rsc'yulir.

Sarafur's surface was dotted with unusual ancient ruins, with many of those structures, hewn out of gigantic blocks of stone, being located on the border between Sarafur's illuminated and dark sides. The ruins were scoured by grave-robbers, and prospectors, treasure hunters, and fugitives also used many of the structures as boltholes, with Sarafur accumulating over time a history of harboring various underworld figures.

The Xal 3 Armorers' Confederacy at one point established a base in the ruins, where the group was visited each standard day by several starships of individuals interested in the Confederacy's armor design and repair services. The Vashan Liberation Force also maintained a small base that was hidden atop a series of collapsed multi-story ruins. In addition, hundreds of Killik nests had been abandoned on Sarafur millennia prior to 3643 BBY. The nests were well-preserved by the planet's hot climate. By the time of the Yuuzhan Vong War, three spaceports of limited services were also located on Sarafur.

The former seabed known as the Krasho Salt Rifts lay on the meridian dividing the illuminated and dark sides of Sarafur. It extended for hundreds of kilometers and covered the entire twilight region for several degrees of latitude. The area resembled a bright spot when viewed from the planet's orbit. The Krasho Salt Rifts were littered with monolithic crystalline salt formations, calcified corals, and fossilized skeletons of colossal sea creatures. The Salt Rifts had dried out centuries before the reign of the Galactic Empire, with scientists sometimes speculating that a rapid drying out of the area had led to a complete extinction of its aquatic ecosystem before any of the species there had time to adapt.

The Kintan Gunrunners gang of smugglers maintained their main base in a series of ruins stretching along the Salt Rifts, a short distance into Sarafur's sun-lit portion. The Gunrunners had selected the location due to the privacy offered by the high temperatures in the area and kept their starships in an old arena situated deep within the ruins. The Rodian shipjacker Tershan and his crew also operated out of the Salt Rifts, although they planned to establish a more secure base in a dense cluster of ruins situated several kilometers to the north of their temporary location. In addition, Arcona criminal groups occasionally mined the Salt Rifts' crystal spires due to the species' pervasive addiction to salt.

At one point, a bustling city of the species that had once inhabited Sarafur was situated at what eventually became the edge of the Krasho Salt Rifts, beyond the future base of the Xal 3 Armorers' Confederacy. The city included a building housing baths of sulfurous mineral waters. After a Killik Sith came to reside there and subsequently died on the planet, the building became his tomb. Tons of collapsing columns and walls eventually buried the baths, and they became one of the exceedingly few reservoirs of standing water in Sarafur's twilight zone that were located close to the planet's surface.

Sarafur first appeared in the roleplaying adventure "Race for the Tessent," which was published for use with Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Roleplaying Game in the ninth issue of the Star Wars Gamer magazine on February 22, 2002. The 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas placed Sarafur in grid square H-16. The planet was mentioned in a Scavenging Crew Skill mission of the 2011 BioWare video game Star Wars: The Old Republic, although the information regarding the mission's outcome was eventually removed from the game.

Instead of featuring a set plot, "Race for the Tessent" presents several settings in the Moddell sector, Sarafur being one of them, that the player-characters may visit during their search for the artifacts known as the Tessents. For each of the settings, the adventure also suggests possible circumstances for a Tessent being hidden there, with the section dedicated to Sarafur noting how at some point Jilst Bindalin could have stolen the Alsakan Tessent and brought it to the Killik Sith warrior's tomb on the planet. Assuming that as much of the non-contradictory information presented in the adventure as possible is canonical with respect to the Star Wars Legends continuity, this article assumes that the Alsakan Tessent and the Ayrou Tessent were instead hidden on the planets Ast Kikorie and Vasha, respectively.

"Race for the Tessent" introduced an apparent contradiction regarding the dating of the Killik Sith warrior's arrival on Sarafur. The adventure establishes that the Sith traveled from the planet Alsakan to Sarafur long before Humans had colonized the former world, yet it also states that Humans drove the Killik off Alsakan. In line with the assumptions this article makes that are outlined above, it is also assumed that the latter statement is in error.

In addition, both the adventure and the roleplaying source article "Endor and the Moddell Sector" that was also published in Star Wars Gamer 9 contain several problematic statements on Sarafur's nature as a tidally locked world that rotates synchronously with its orbit around its sun. In the latter work, the planet is described as a "world that no longer rotates, spinning around the Tail's yellow sun with one face always locked toward it." The statement is self-contradictory—if indeed Sarafur had not been revolving around its own axis of rotation, it would have been impossible for the planet to have kept the same side of its surface always oriented toward its sun as it was orbiting it—that is, revolving around the star. Furthermore, "Endor and the Moddell Sector" lists Sarafur's local year as being 240 "local days" long despite the concept of a local day being undefined in Star Wars for tidally locked planets.

Finally, both articles use incorrect terminology when referring to the region surrounding the border between Sarafur's illuminated and dark sides, that is, its terminator. "Endor and the Moddell Sector" refers to the area as Sarafur's "equatorial region," while "Race for the Tessent" in several instances calls it the "event horizon." Similarly to the real world, in Star Wars the latter term instead refers to a zone surrounding a black hole. The former term in turn describes a line that is equidistant from a celestial body's northern and southern pole and is perpendicular to its meridians—that is, lines connecting its poles—with one of which the celestial body's terminator must by its definition coincide at any given moment in time.

• "Endor and the Moddell Sector" — Star Wars Gamer 9
• The Essential Atlas