The Purge was an Imperial prison barge used during the Galactic Civil War.
The Purge started its life as a garbage barge retrofitted with holding cells and a makeshift medbay. As early as 33 BBY, the ship was used to haul convicts to various detainment stations and penal colonies around the galaxy. During a routine prisoner transfer to the Cog Hive Seven prison, the Purge was attacked and boarded by Jabba the Hutt's yacht Star Jewel. After hijacking the barge, Jabba's mercenaries used it to dock with the prison and carry out a surprise retaliatory attack against the prison's warden who had executed Jabba's agents in the prison.
The Imperial prison barge Purge was in service to the Imperial Corrections Service around the time of 1 BBY. Warden Bissley Kloth was commander of the ship at this time and had transformed the Purge into a floating prison of its own. After the barge's engines became non-functional while in transit to a detainment moon, the crew was forced to send a salvage team aboard a nearby derelict Star Destroyer, Vector, in an attempt to scavenge repair parts. Some of the prisoners onboard during the journey were Aur Myss, Von Longo, his sons Trig and Kale, and the smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca.
The team obtained the necessary parts, but didn't encounter any crew members aboard the Star Destroyer. Shortly after returning to the Purge, however, most of the salvage team began to show symptoms of a then-unknown infectious disease, which proved to be uniformly fatal in the short term. Even though the Purges chief medical officer, Zahara Cody, immediately quarantined the members of the team, it did not stop the spread of the virus. Almost all the beings aboard the Purge were quickly infected with the pathogen, overwhelming the barge's medbay. Less than twelve hours after the initial engine malfunction, only six beings were left alive on board the Purge: two Imperial officers, Dr. Cody and Captain of the Guard Jareth Sartoris, as well as four prisoners, the two Longo brothers, as well as Han Solo and Chewbacca. After being attacked by the mysteriously reanimated corpses of the barge's crew and prisoners, the survivors were forced to abandon the Purge and take refuge in the derelict Vector.
Following the incident, the Purge was recovered, and messages that were found aboard the barge were released to the public for academic purposes.
- Death Troopers: Recovered Messages from Purge
- The Essential Reader's Companion
- "Classic Moment: Evil Empire!" — Star Wars Insider 149