Vrant Tarnum was a terrestrial astronomical object in the far reaches of the Stygmarn system. The Kharvashark Ruins were located in its southern hemisphere. Long before the High Republic Era, the Elders of the Path hid half of an ancient relic on Vrant Tarnum in a cave on the outskirts of the ruins, with the hopes that it would never be retrieved. Elder Tromak later divulged the location of the relic to Krix Kamerat in order to keep the information safe from the Nihil.
However, Kamerat betrayed Tromak and shared the information with Eye of the Nihil Marchion Ro. Tromak managed to escape the Nihil, and approached Jedi Grand Master Yoda for assistance retrieving the relic from Vrant Tarnum before the Nihil could get it. However, Ro and Kamerat got there first, leading to Yoda and Tromak's starship being shot down and the Grand Master going missing. Ro set up a Nihil base at the ruins, which was later investigated by a Jedi team shortly before the Nihil attacked Valo.
Vrant Tarnum was a terrestrial moon located in the far reaches of the Stygmarn system. The moon featured a Type I atmosphere breathable to several humans. When viewed from space, Vrant Tarnum was light orange in color. The moon had a mottled and broken surface with jagged canyons that snaked across its surface, as well as strong atmospheric winds.
The Elders of the Path hid the Rod of Seasons in Vrant Tarnum's Kharvashark Ruins.
Following the dissolution of the Path of the Open Hand cult in 382 BBY, a descendant splinter faction of the organization—the Elders of the Path—formed. The Elders of the Path acquired a Nameless control rod—the Rod of Seasons—formerly in the Path's possession, and after the group realized its destructive capability to control Great Leveler, a creature designed to attack Force-sensitives, they hid one half of it in the Kharvashark Ruins on Vrant Tarnum and the other piece elsewhere.
The group's leaders, the Council of Elders, kept the locations of the two pieces as a highly-guarded secret, only passing on the information to the next in line for their leadership positions. Two of the individuals tasked with keeping the knowledge of Vrant Tarnum and the other location secret were the Elders Barbatash and Tromak. However, one part of the rod came into the possession of the leader of the Nihil marauders—Marchion Ro—who then sought to find the other piece, unaware it was stored on Vrant Tarnum.
The Nihil learned about the Elders of the Path settling on the Outer Rim planet Trymant IV and rescued Tromak from the world before it was struck by hyperspace debris in the Great Hyperspace Disaster of 232 BBY, intending to coerce him to give up the location of the control rod's other half. Though Tromak refused to tell Ro the sacred knowledge, he instead entrusted the secret to a young Disciple of the Elders of the Path who had been rescued with him—Krix Kamerat. Kamerat betrayed the Elder and reported to Ro that the relic he sought was in Vrant Tarnum's Kharvashark Ruins.
Afterward, Tromak managed to escape the Nihil's attempt to feed him to bogaranth creatures and convinced the Jedi Master Yoda to help retrieve the artifact from Vrant Tarnum, fervently believing in the endeavor's urgency after learning from the Jedi that the Nihil already had the other half. At Tromak's request, Yoda left his comlink behind and did not tell his fellow Jedi where he was going.
At the same time, Ro and Kamerat traveled to Vrant Tarnum, acquiring the control rod half from the Kharvashark Ruins. Kamerat, however, had told Ro where the artifact was hidden, and the Nihil reached Vrant Tarnum first. When Yoda and Tromak arrived, their ship was shot down by security drones left in orbit. Ro, meanwhile, entered the Kharvashark Ruins with Kamerat and retrieved the artifact, which he declared the "missing piece" he had been searching for. Telling Kamerat that he reminded him of himself, Ro put him in charge of the Nihil outpost he subsequently established at the ruins. Still possessing some care for his former friends, however, Kamerat sent a message to the Elders on Trymant, telling them the Nihil had a base in the Stygmarn system and asking after Mrala's location. As the Force-sensitive Mikkian had gone with the Jedi, the Elders had no answers.
Some months later, Mrala, Talisola, and Sy returned to Trymant for answers about why the Nihil had wanted Tromak. Speaking to Barbatash, they learned about Kamerat's message and where it had been sent from, deciding to check Vrant Tarnum because its remoteness meant Nihil activity could go unnoticed. Linking up with Jedi Knight Vernestra Rwoh and her Padawan Imri Cantaros, the group went to the Stygmarn system in two starships, the Star Hopper and the Varonchagger. While Sy, Mrala, and Cantaros stayed onboard the larger ship to monitor activity on the surface, Rwoh and Talisola took the Varonchagger up close over Vrant Tarnum in search. With Talisola piloting, she and Rwoh flew the Varonchagger over the many canyons that slashed across the surface, passing through a natural rock loop.
The two young women dropped low when their sensors picked up a burst of activity, and Talisola hid the Varonchagger behind a rock formation before gliding. Taking a closer look, they saw that the enemy starships were flying in some kind of formation and realized that the Nihil were on the move. Rwoh alerted the Star Hopper, and they saw that the ships were emerging from the Nihil's hidden base. After watching the ships depart on their mounted engines, Talisola and Rwoh received a message forwarded through the Starlight Beacon which revealed that the Nihil intended to attack Valo, site of the Valo Republic Fair. The Varonchagger and Star Hopper departed Vrant Tarnum for Valo immediately.
In the aftermath of the attack, several captured raiders who had been stationed on Vrant Tarnum spoke of the Nihil base there with a certain reverence upon being questioned. In combination with Rwoh and Sy's report on what they had seen there, after the Battle of Grizal, Master Stellan Gios asked Jedi investigator Emerick Caphtor to investigate Vrant Tarnum with a squad of Galactic Republic troopers while looking into the cause of Master Loden Greatstorm's mysterious death on Grizal. When Caphtor and his team arrived, they fought Nihil who remained at the Kharvashark Ruins, killing some and causing others to flee. Inspecting the ruins, Caphtor and his droid Q-2 found the entrance to the cave where the Leveler's control rod had previously been located, and Q-2 discovered that the opening line of an old nursery rhyme which Caphtor suspected to be connected to the events was carved around it.
The significant losses sustained by Kamerat's forces during the Republic and Jedi incursion led him to incur some displeasure from Ro. When Kamerat later expressed interest in the artifact Ro had taken from the ruins, hoping to use it against the Jedi, the Eye tasked him with regaining favor with him. Kamerat chose to do this by attacking the planet Takodana.
The Kharvashark Ruins, the hiding place of part of the rod that controlled the Great Leveler, were located in Vrant Tarnum's southern hemisphere.
Vrant Tarnum was first mentioned in the third issue of the 2021 Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures comic series.
Vrant Tarnum was first mentioned in the third issue of the 2021 comic series Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures, released as part of the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project's Phase I. The issue was written by Daniel José Older and released by IDW Publishing on April 7, 2021. It made its first full appearance in the fifth issue of Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures, which was written by Older, illustrated by Harvey Tolibao, Pow Rodrix, and Manuel Bracchi, and released by IDW Publishing on June 16 of the same year.
The third issue indicates collectively refers to Vrant Tarnum and one other location when indicating Tromak hid "the names of the planets" an artifact was hidden on. Older's middle-grade novel The High Republic: Race to Crashpoint Tower—which was released on June 29, 2021, as part of Star Wars: The High Republics Phase I—refers to Vrant Tarnum singularly as a moon, which this article assumes is correct.
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