Beheboth

A backwater desert world located along an offshoot of the Hydian Way between Arbra and Golrath, Beheboth was a planet where water was an extremely scarce and valuable resource. Beheboth was the fifth planet in its system in the Outer Rim's Sanbra sector, and had three moons. Baking at day and frigid at night, Beheboth was a planet of sweeping, arid plains and imposing rock formations, including large caves and mountain ranges. What little surface water was found on Beheboth came from a few salty natural springs and shallow lakes, and the planet was often wracked by salt and alkaline dust storms.

Although inhospitable to life, Beheboth was the homeworld of an extremely unique sentient lifeform known as the Tirrith, an empathic gaseous culture of hive-minded sentient particles that held considerable power when joined together as one. The Tirrith had the ability to alter Beheboth's atmosphere, and in 3 ABY, its seeding of the planet's clouds to cause the planet's first rain in centuries helped bring about a minor return in some hardscrabble plant life—albeit mostly limited to the mountains—and an uptick in animal life. The planet's deserts teemed with sand lice, which had a habit of spoiling settlers' food.

First settled by Bothans during the Republic era, Beheboth's original colonists were gradually replaced by Humans who dotted the planet's sparse landscape with moisture farms, and building a ramshackle economy around subsistence agriculture and smuggling and other illegal trades. Although nominally a member of the Republic and later officially annexed by the Galactic Empire, Beheboth was regarded as a minor world and was allowed little say in galactic politics, receiving only Coruscant-based regional representatives who never visited Beheboth. In 3 ABY, a criminal named Gideon Longspar learned how to manipulate the native Tirrith into aiding him and a gang of brigands in ransacking many of the planet's moisture farms, stealing every drop of water and reselling the liquid for exorbitant prices on the black market—a scheme made even more devastating by the fact that, at the time, Beheboth had not seen rain in years.

With many locals forced into desperate situations, Darial Anglethorn, the owner of the planet's largest moisture farm, took a leadership role, organizing defense efforts and overseeing the distribution of water to those in need. When the raids were at their height, Rebel Alliance pilot Luke Skywalker was forced to land on Beheboth after his X-wing had sustained damage in a raid on nearby Golrath. Skywalker soon became acquainted with Anglethorn, who recruited him to aid in her defense efforts against Longspar's brigands. After Anglethorn's farm was raided and Anglethorn herself kidnapped, Skywalker moved on Longspar's mountain stronghold himself, ultimately gaining the aid of the vengeful Tirrith in freeing Anglethorn and defeating Longspar's gang. As thanks, the Tirrith seeded Beheboth's clouds and started a downpour of rain, providing desperately needed water to Beheboth.

In the aftermath of the water bandits' defeat, Rebel and later New Republic troops maintained a presence on the world in order to ensure no further abuse of the Tirrith, which quickly returned to its reclusive ways and ignored multiple entreaties to bring down more rain. Despite this, the rains caused a small revitalization in native plant and animal life and led to a period of economic growth, although within a few years a prolonged drought began to threaten these advances. In 7 ABY, Anglethorn was appointed Beheboth's first representative to the New Republic Senate, a role she served while continuing to work her own moisture farm and investigate crimes as elected peacekeeper of the town of Prosperity. The New Republic itself also established a presence on Beheboth, setting up an outpost in Longspar's old mountain fortress.

In 8 ABY, Anglethorn discovered yet another attempt to manipulate the Tirrith, this time by disgraced former Imperial admiral Mils Giel, who had settled on Beheboth after suffering a crushing defeat on nearby Golrath. After investigating the mysterious death of a former farm worker named Berl Matoone, Anglethorn discovered a connection to Giel—sensing that had stumbled onto something big, she asked for aid from her old friend Skywalker, who was now a Jedi Knight. Skywalker arrived on Beheboth in time to save Anglethorn's life after an explosive chase with Giel, and uncovered the former military officer's plot to weaponize the Tirrith and use them to restore his status in the Imperial hierarchy. Giel used the Tirrith to kill the New Republic staff at their mountain outpost, but was forced to flee Beheboth after being discovered by Skywalker and Anglethorn.

Beheboth was believed to be devoid of native sentient life until the discovery of the Tirrith in 3 ABY. Although Tirrith hives had previously been sighted by settlers, they had only been perceived as unusual manifestations of chemicals in Beheboth's atmosphere. However, the Tirrith was in fact a highly intelligent and powerful hive entity with the ability to alter the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere, although its reclusive and pacifistic nature isolated it from the planetary community at large. Beheboth was considered ill-populated during the era of the Galactic Civil War, but supported a community of sentients aside from the native Tirrith cultures, many of them moisture farmers and their workers.

Although the population of Beheboth was approximately 17 million, over 99 percent of that was Tirrith—the planet's Human colonists, who replaced the Bothans who originally settled the world, never topped the 60,000-80,000 range in number. Many of the Humans native to Beheboth displayed cosmetic mutations from baseline Humans, including purple skin, extra eyebrows or missing fingers, although they were otherwise anatomically identical to the rest of their species. Although the cause of these distinctions was unknown by the New Republic era, anthropologists theorized that it was due to the relatively small gene pool, working in tandem with the planet's salt and alkaline dust storms. The raids of Gideon Longspar's brigands put these settlers in mortal danger in 3 ABY, leaving them extremely distrustful and often openly hostile towards perceived outsiders.

Although the desert planet Beheboth was often inhospitable to life, several bustling desert towns grew up between the moisture farms that were the lifeblood of Beheboth's economy, including Garrotine. These towns were the center of Beheboth's society, as the planet did not have any larger government, with authority localized among the individual town councils. Some of these grew significantly after the Tirrith brought rain to the planet in 3 ABY—Garrotine, renamed "Prosperity," expanded into a rowdy town with over a dozen cantinas in just five years. However, these towns were still very much ramshackle frontier societies, with very few licensed doctors working on the planet by 8 ABY.

Beheboth first appeared as the setting of Star Wars (1977) 66, written by David Michelinie, illustrated by Walt Simonson and released in 1982. Significant further information on the planet was provided in the 2003 Wizards of the Coast article Beheboth: Blood and Water, written by Cory J. Herndon.

• "Alien Anthology Addendum" — Star Wars Gamer 7
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia