An Imperial Mine had been established on the planet Lok by the Galactic Empire during the Galactic Civil War.
The Imperial mine was a underground mining facility located in a remote area of the planet Lok. It was a labor camp operated by the Galactic Empire where only worked prisonners. The mine was associated to a secret Imperial research facility on Lok. Hence, the minerals and gasses mined were used by the Empire at the research facility or sold for profit.
Because of a feud between General Otto, the commander of the Imperial garrison on Lok, and Imperial officers in charge of the mine and research facility, there was very little Imperial presence at the mine. In order to prevent General Otto from meddling in their affairs, these officers deployed battle droids and mercenaries to guard the mine and the research facility instead of requisitioning Otto's troops.
In 1 ABY, the miners hit a gas pocket and released a toxic gas in the mine. Since the air filtration system was rather cheap, it did not prevent the gas from infecting the miners. The gas did not physically injured the miners but affected their brain and eventually made them crazy and very aggressive.
During the incident, a group of miners avoided poison contamination and managed to find a starship that they used to flee the mine. However, the ship crashed before the miners were able to escape Lok, without any survivor. A short time later, the Lok Revenants, a criminal organization ruled by the pirate and warlord Nym, raided the hideout of the Sulfur Lake Pirates where they retrieved an Imperial droid memory module. This droid had been present in the ship that escaped the mine and its memory module was still intact despite the crash. The data module revealed the very situation in the mine to the criminals. Nym's chief engineer Jinkins then decided to obtain a sample of the gas released in the mine to study it and use it as a weapon if possible.
Jinkins thus tasked a group of spacers who had recently joined the Lok Revenants with retrieving a sample of toxic gas. The spacers therefore headed to the mine where they had to fight numerous mad and violent miners. Moreover, they were attacked by the Imperial droidekas that defended the facility. During the fight, the Revenants killed several miners of note, Raynar Cath and Wes Riggers, two enemies of Nym, as well as the Grand Foreman Rel Rogock and the mine controller Teemu Komo. In addition, they stole some crates of mined ore, and extracted DNA samples from the enraged miners in order to study the exact effect of the gas. One of the spacer also collected a sword in the mine. Finally, the spacers found the air filtration system of the mine and retrieved a sealed container of the poisonous gas pumped by the filter. They eventually delivered it to Jinkins.
The Imperial Mine was a location in the 2003 video game Star Wars Galaxies, a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts, prior to its closure on December 15, 2011. The Imperial Mine was added to the game as part of the so-called "Nym's Theme Park," released with the "Publish 3" on October 8, 2003. This questline was later revamped with the release of the "Game Update 16: Stronghold of the Lok Revenants," on March 23, 2010.