Veeshas Tuwan

Veeshas Tuwan was a sprawling library-temple and record hall complex situated deep in the frozen wastes of Arkania. At its fullest extent, Veeshas Tuwan covered an area of more than five square kilometers and extended deep underground for many levels. As one of the few record halls of the old Sith Empire, Veeshas Tuwan was home to an extensive collection of Sith artifacts and writings drawn from across the Empire. So extensive was Veeshas Tuwan's collected contents that even the most experienced Sith Lords faced difficulty in locating and retrieving the information they sought. Like many library-temples, the complex likewise included a number of sealed chambers in which Sith sorcerers conducted dark-sided experiments and transcribed rituals of Sith magic.

The Veeshas Tuwan library-temple was constructed roughly around the time of the Hundred-Year Darkness and the Dark Jedi Exiles' subsequent reorganization of the ancient Sith Empire into the old Sith Empire. Located on frigid Arkania, a Colonies world known for producing mad scientists and rogue geneticists since the Indecta Era, Veeshas Tuwan constituted one of the nascent Empire's earliest colonies located outside the veil of the Stygian Caldera. The complex came to serve as one of the Empire's primary record halls and repositories of Sith artifacts, lore, and writings over a span of millennia. At its fullest extent, the library was so extensive that even the most experienced Sith Lords faced difficulty locating and retrieving the information they sought.

Veeshas Tuwan met its end during the joint Republic–Jedi counterinvasion that followed the conclusion of the Great Hyperspace War in 5000 BBY. Around the time of the Sith Empire's collapse, the Jedi Order became aware of Veeshas Tuwan's existence on Arkania. In response to the presence of a Sith colony so close to the heart of the Republic, a Jedi strike force composed of hundreds of Jedi Masters and Knights was dispatched to Arkania and tasked with razing the Veeshas Tuwan complex to the ground. While most of the library's artifacts and scrolls were destroyed to prevent the Sith from returning to power at some indeterminate point in the future, a handful of significant writings were stolen and preserved by the Jedi for subsequent study.

Subsequent generations of Sith, particularly the various iterations of New Sith who arose in the centuries following Darth Ruin's Fourth Great Schism, commonly perceived the destruction of Veeshas Tuwan and the loss of its collated lore as one of the greatest blows ever dealt to the Sith religion in its entire history. Sith Lord Seviss Vaa, a ranking member of Skere Kaan's Brotherhood of Darkness and a scholar familiar with the history of the old Sith Empire, personally believed that the Jedi deserved the most painful deaths imaginable for their destruction of the Veeshas Tuwan, as this act robbed later generations of Sith of the greater part of their cultural heritage and history.

Veeshas Tuwan was the subject of a minor retcon with the publication of its entry in 2008's The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. While 1996's Tales of the Jedi Companion stated clearly that "[n]ot a single resource was saved, for the Jedi feared any remaining dark-side knowledge might allow the Sith to return to power at some point in the future," the subject's Encyclopedia entry implies that the Jedi retrieved at least some of the library's contents before razing it to the ground, as the relevant entry reads "a great portion of [Sith] history was destroyed or stolen by the Jedi."

• Tales of the Jedi Companion
• The Essential Guide to Alien Species
• Alien Anthology
• Power of the Jedi Sourcebook
• Ultimate Alien Anthology
• Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force
• Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• The Essential Atlas