Siege of Lothal

The Siege of Lothal was a lockdown ordered by the Galactic Empire on the Outer Rim planet Lothal in the fourth year prior to the Battle of Yavin. The Siege came about as a reaction to the ongoing insurgency and the unrest on Lothal following the success of a rebel operation in the Mustafar system, one that led to the destruction of the Sovereign, the flagship of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. As Lothal was an industrial world vital to the Imperial conquest of the Outer Rim, the Emperor, Darth Sidious, sent his apprentice, Darth Vader, to put an end to rebel activities on the world.

As the Empire cracked down on Lothal, bringing numerous Star Destroyers over Capital City as an intimidation tactic, the demands on the local authorities to produce results in finding the rebels and their sympathizers intensified. Minister Maketh Tua, acting in place of the absent Governor Arihnda Pryce, was unable to produce the results that Darth Vader and Governor Tarkin expected. Worried that she would be punished by the Empire, she contacted the rebels and requested that they assist her in defecting from the Empire in exchange for a list of names of those on Lothal who sympathized with the rebellion. The crew of the Ghost, a cell of rebels that had been based on Lothal, agreed to take on the mission to rescue Tua. They returned to Lothal aboard a commandeered Star Commuter 2000 shuttle and intercepted the minister. However, the Empire had tracked her communications and knew she was planning to defect. Agent Kallus of the Imperial Security Bureau escorted her to the shuttle she was supposed to take to visit Governor Tarkin, but the shuttle exploded in an act of Imperial sabotage, which Kallus blamed the rebels for in order to turn public opinion against the rebellion.

The Empire's response to the rebel incursion was to lockdown the planet, mandating that no ship could leave the surface of the planet without Imperial authorization. The rebels, effectively trapped on Lothal, hid within Capital City. They put together a plan to infiltrate the Imperial Complex, where they intended to steal a shuttle and escape the planet. They successfully made it through the complex and found a shuttle, as well as a number of military-grade shield generators that they stole on behalf of the rebellion. As they prepared to escape, they were confronted by Darth Vader, who engaged two of the rebels—Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus and his Padawan, Ezra Bridger—in a lightsaber duel. Vader, who Jarrus realized was a Sith Lord, quickly overpowered them but allowed them to leave, as the shuttle had a tracking device on it and Vader intended to use it to track the shuttle to the rest of the rebel fleet. Before they could escape, however, the rebels contacted Lando Calrissian, a smuggler with whom they had dealt in the past, for help getting off of Lothal. In exchange for three of their shield generators, Calrissian gave the rebels a number of masking transponders that could duplicate the shuttle's signal and scatter the Imperial forces. The Empire, meanwhile, rounded up the citizens of Tarkintown, a refugee settlement the rebels helped in the past, and burned the town to the ground as punishment for the rebellion's activities.

The rebels returned to the fleet after using their jammers to escape Lothal. Vader tracked them to the fleet using his personal TIE Advanced x1 starfighter and engaged Phoenix Squadron, a group of rebel A-wing starfighters, in combat. As he fought through Phoenix Squadron, he also mortally damaged the rebel command ship, Phoenix Home. The Lothal cell, along with one of the rebellion's leaders, Commander Ahsoka Tano, boarded the Ghost and engaged Vader's fighter. During the fighting, Jarrus and Tano used the Force in an attempt to learn more about the Sith Lord's identity. What Tano sensed overwhelmed her, while Vader realized that Tano, whom he had trained when he was a Jedi Knight, was still alive. Soon thereafter, the command ship was destroyed and the entire fleet retreated. Vader reported to the Emperor that Tano was still alive, which Sidious believed was an opportunity for the Empire to find other Jedi who had survived the Great Jedi Purge.

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