Nathema

Nathema, originally known as Medriaas, was a fertile agriworld located in the Nathema system of the Outer Rim Territories' Chorlian sector. During the reign of the Sith Empire in 5103 BBY, the planet's ruler, Sith Lord Dramath, was deposed in by his own illegitimate son Tenebrae, who received the title of Lord Vitiate and rulership of Medriaas from the reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, Marka Ragnos. Renaming the planet Nathema, Vitiate kept his world isolated from the power plays of his fellow Sith over the next century, and his isolation spared Nathema from the Great Hyperspace War in 5000 BBY. The following year, Vitiate summoned the eight thousand remaining Sith Lords to Nathema in order to save the crumbling Sith Empire and dominated their minds, proceeding to combine their strength and a superweapon known as Zildrog in a complex ritual of Sith magic that granted him immortality while stripping the Force from the entire planet.

With only one exception, Ritual of Nathema instantly killed every living thing on the planet, which became a barren wasteland devoid even of droids and technology as Vitiate hid his past and the hyperspace routes leading to Nathema. Though he kept the planet a secret from his reconstituted Sith Empire, Vitiate still used it for his own purposes, sending powerful Force users who opposed him to be experimented upon by his servants in the Sanitarium, which was guarded by the Nathema Zealots, Force-sensitives that survived the planet's Void in the Force through daily rituals and intense meditation. The ritual's sole survivors of the cataclysm, a species of semi-sentient insects known as voreclaws, were saved from extinction by Vitiate for use as guards of the vaults of dark side artifacts he kept beneath the planet's surface.

After Vitiate established a second Eternal Empire in the Wild Space under the name Valkorion, he sent his daughter Vaylin to undergo mental conditioning in the Sanitarium; under supervision of the Anomid scienist Jarak, she underwent brutal experiments that made her respond to a specific phrase, before being allowed to return home to Zakuul. After the physical body of Valkorion was killed in 3636 BBY, Vaylin assumed his title of Eternal Empress and ordered Jarak to return to Nathema and undo her conditioning. After going through numerous test subjects, Jarak made a breakthrough, and Vaylin returned to Nathema and submitted herself to the procedure. The ritual caused her power to lash out of control, but Vaylin summoned enough strength to break her mental chains and departed Nathema. Lana Beniko and the Commander of the Alliance that opposed the Eternal Empire attempted to stop her, but arrived too late and were forced to take shelter in the Emperor's Vault, where they obtained Dramath's holocron, while Vaylin used her newfound power to remotely destroy the Sanitarium from her flagship.

The Commander used the holocron to destroy the spirit of Vitiate, whose final death caused the Force to return to Nathema, which became overgrown with plant life and inhabited by surviving Zealots and escaped experiments. A group known as the Order of Zildrog found the ancient superweapon on Nathema and planned to reactivate Zildrog and use it against the Alliance. Thanks to the information provided by Theron Shan, Beniko and the Commander returned to Nathema to stop the Order. They were able to destroy Zildrog and defeat the Order's leaders Vinn Atrius and GEMINI 16, though at the cost of losing both the Eternal Fleet and the Gravestone.

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