Accresker Jail was a wreckage-prison that was operated by the Galactic Empire. The mobile prison was considered to have a low survival rate, as remembered by Chelli Lona Aphra, who was captured by the Empire's Magna Tolvan on Son-tuul. While imprisoned at Accresker, Aphra uncovered an infestation of gundravian hookspores that led the prison to be decommissioned and fired on a collision trajectory with the planet Tiferep Major. Shortly before the prison hit the planet, however, it was held back by a tractor beam, allowing Darth Vader to board it. When Vader's search for Aphra ended in failure, he returned to the Executor and disabled the tractor beam, allowing what was left of Accresker Jail to crash into Tiferep Major, destroying the prison and devastating the planet.
Specifically designed to discourage rescue attempts, Accresker Jail consisted of eighty thousand tons of wrecked starships, held together by an attractor node and surrounded by a tractor envelope, which also provided the prison with gravity and kept objects from escaping. The main body of the prison was pulled by a prison-tug, a specialized Arquitens-class command cruiser. Transport pods ran on the strings that attached the cruiser to the prison, allowing staff and inmates to move between them. The prison would be taken to combat zones, where the jail collided with its target and the prisoners were deployed. Weapons and food were dispensed via hubdroids that kept watch over the convicts, and oxygen was held inside the prison with an airdome that could expand during combat.
At some point after the jail's construction, Accresker Jail picked up the wreckage of an ancient Penumbra-1 shattersprite, along with the corpse of a dead Jedi inside it. The Jedi's ship was overrun by gundravian hookspores, which began to spread throughout the prison. The combination of the dead Jedi and the hookspores led to the fungus becoming able to appear as a Force spirit, and use the Force to interact with objects, making the prison seem as if it was haunted by a ghost.
Around 1 ABY, Lieutenant-Inspector Magna Tolvan led an attack on the Son-tuul Pride syndicate, using a micro-tracker that had been planted on Chelli Aphra. Tolvan ordered a stormtrooper to send Aphra to Accresker Jail on the transport Shuttle Six, along with her droid Dek-Nil and the low-riskers from the wreckage of Hivebase-1.
Nearly a week after Aphra had been sent to Accresker, she made an escape attempt during an attack on an EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate, causing the destruction of her hubdroid, which killed her entire squad aside from an individual who called himself "Lopset Yas," but was truly the rogue surgeon Cornelius Evazan in disguise. She and Yas were rescued by Dek-Nil, who let them join his squad. Their escape attempt was thwarted by the Force spirit, who activated Dek-Nil's restraining bolt, causing him to destroy the escape pod they were trying to reach.
Shortly after, Aphra organized a second escape attempt during an attack on a pirate station, forcing Tolvan to rescue her. The second escape attempt was once again ruined by both the arrival of Sana Starros and the interference of the Force spirit, which led to Aphra and Yas discovering the gundravian hookspores in the wreckage of the Jedi's ship. After the attack on the pirate station was over, Aphra was interrogated using a bor gullet. During the interrogation, Aphra revealed the existence of the gundravian hookspores to the interrogation officer and his lieutenant.
Upon learning of the infection within the prison, the Accresker command ordered the decommission of the prison, and propelled it on a collision trajectory with Tiferep Major, a known Rebel Alliance-affiliated planet. The staff abandoned the Arquitens-class cruiser, and the ship crashed into the rest of Accresker. As the wreckage-prison made its way towards Tiferep Major, the convicts aboard it fell into chaos and savagery, fighting with each other. The Force spirit continued to cause trouble by killing several convicts.
In the midst of the havoc, Aphra broke into the cruiser, hoping to find the gravity controls. She set the gravity to half of what it had been, rearranging some wreckage from within the prison and bringing the Penumbra-1 shattersprite up towards them. At the same time, Tam Posla, who Aphra had tricked into believing that she was holding Cornelius Evazan hostage, made his way to the prison. He was followed by 0-0-0, who had used listening equipment in the ship he had given Posla to learn of Aphra's location.
As Accresker Jail continued to fall toward Tiferep Major, Aphra led Starros and Tolvan into a single escape pod that had been left behind. Planning to send the two of them away so she could escape on her own, she launched the pod, but Tolvan escaped it at the last minute, leaving Starros in the pod alone. Despite Tolvan's refusal to leave, Aphra continued with her plan, heading for the main launch hangar. As she, Tolvan and Yas waited, Tam Posla arrived in the hangar with his ship, along with a shuttle that he had agreed to trade for Evazan. When Posla arrived, the hookspores left the wreckage of the Jedi ship, hoping to use him as its new host. However, Aphra froze it with a coolant grille, and Posla left with a similarly frozen Lopset Yas, who had "shapeshifted" into the form of Evazan.
Aphra and Tolvan retrieved the Jedi's lightsaber, and boarded the shuttle Posla had left for them. Before they could leave Accresker, their shuttle was shot down by the assassin droids 0-0-0 and BT-1, who landed their ship inside the prison. Several convicts tried to attack the droids, but Triple-Zero killed them all. Seconds before the prison collided with Tiferep Major, it was caught in the Executors tractor beam. Darth Vader, who Tolvan had anonymously contacted, boarded Accresker Jail in search of her.
Vader made his way through the prison, slaughtering several convicts that stood in his way. As Vader searched for her, Aphra, who had previously decided to use the bor to wipe her memory, reluctantly let Tolvan choose to have her mind erased instead. While Tolvan's mind was being wiped, Vader encountered BT-1, destroying the astromech droid. He discovered Tolvan shortly afterward, interrogating her on Aphra's whereabouts. Tam Posla, who had returned with Yas, confronted Aphra, declaring that she was under arrest. Before Posla could arrest her, however, Triple-Zero knocked him down, mauling him to death. As Vader took Tolvan prisoner, 0-0-0 similarly captured Aphra, both returning to their respective ships. After taking Tolvan back to his shuttle, Vader sensed the hookspores through the Force, leaving to look for them.
Once he had left, the shuttle was destroyed by a small squadron of Rebel Alliance starfighters, led by Sana Starros, who had evacuated the inhabitants of Tiferep Major. Vader attacked Tan Leader's X-wing, but let the other fighters escape after noticing the hookspore swarm advancing toward him. Vader destroyed the spores, and ordered for the tractor beam to be disabled. As Vader was collected by a shuttle, Starros retrieved Tolvan, who had survived the explosion. 0-0-0 brought Aphra to his ship, only to discover it had been destroyed. "Lopset Yas" confronted them from behind, stunning both Triple-Zero and Aphra and escaping aboard Tam Posla's empty ship. All three parties escaped the falling prison, leaving it to continue its path toward Tiferep Major. Accresker Jail broke through the planet's ring system, and collided into its surface with a massive explosion. The prison was destroyed in the crash, leaving a vast crater behind on Tiferep Major.
Within the ruins of Accresker Jail, Posla's corpse, still relatively intact, floated lifelessly. Although the hookspores were defeated, the Force energy that had been within them remained, locating and possessing Posla's dead body. Posla recovered the remains of BT-1 from the wreckage, rebuilding him and tracking Triple-Zero's signal to Milvayne.
Accresker Jail was one of the Imperial prisons known by the New Republic Intelligence agent Caern Adan.
Accresker Jail was first mentioned in the 2018 canon comic Doctor Aphra (2016) 19, written by Kieron Gillen and Simon Spurrier. It first appeared in the following issue, Doctor Aphra (2016) 20, also written by Simon Spurrier and illustrated by Kev Walker.
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