Mission to Mustafar

In the third year of the Clone Wars, Darth Sidious—the Dark Lord of the Sith who was publicly known as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of the Galactic Republic—sent his apprentice, Darth Vader, on a mission to Mustafar to kill the Separatist Council, the wealthy and influential backers of the late Count Dooku and the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Sidious, who secretly controlled the Separatist Alliance as part of his plot to take over the galaxy, had sent the Separatist Council to the volcanic planet Mustafar under the guise of protecting them, where their power collapsed after the Battle of Utapau with the Clone Wars ending in victory for the Republic. When Vader arrived, however, he assassinated each member of the Separatist Council in order to bring an end to the Separatist rebellion and to cover up Sidious' relations with the Separatists to the general public. As Vader massacred the Separatist leaders on Mustafar, Chancellor Palpatine publicly declared himself as the galaxy's Emperor and transformed the Republic into the Galactic Empire.

Vader contacted his master after the Separatist leadership were killed, and the Dark Lord ordered him to shut down the Separatist Droid Army. In doing so, the defeated Confederacy ceased to meaningfully function in totality. Senator Padmé Amidala, Vader's wife, soon arrived on Mustafar in an attempt to bring Vader, who had been the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, back to the light. She failed, and Vader engaged in a lightsaber duel with Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, a fight that left Vader brutally scarred and in need of a life-supporting suit of armor for the rest of his life. In the years that followed, some holdouts of the Confederacy continued to endure throughout the galaxy despite the end of the war. The Imperial Military tracked these holdouts down to destroy them and absorb their technology into the Imperial regime.

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