Malpaz incident

An incident occurred at the Imperial Project Celestial Power facility on the planet Malpaz early in the Imperial Era. Following kyber crystal experiments, Imperial researchers failed to contain the crystal and the energy caused a series of massive explosions that annihilated the facility and soon caused the destruction of the Malpaz capital city. Over ten thousand civilians would perish from the resulting fires and nuclear fallout caused when the city's nuclear power plant was damaged.

In the aftermath of the incident, Project Celestial Power's Orson Krennic spoke with the team and eventually ordered them to be "removed." The incident was presented to the public as a Separatist attack. When the scientist Galen Erso visited Malpaz, Krennic informed him of such, claiming that the destruction had nothing to do with the facility's research attempts. However, Erso later deduced the true nature of the incident and realized that the Empire was attempting to weaponize his kyber research.

Text and facts from the “Malpaz incident” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.