Xerxes was a planet in the Xerxes system of the Core Worlds. The world had an atmosphere breathable to Humans, and a local police force operated on the planet.
During the Galactic Civil War, the smuggler Roark Garnet wanted to visit a weapons shop on Xerxes. However, he was being sought by the local police and believed that there was a possibility of a trap having been laid for him in the store. After observing the shop for an hour, Garnet could not decide whether a trap awaited him or not without a visual inspection. Unwilling to walk into a potential snare, he offered a local Human citizen twenty credits to enter the shop, look around, then report what they saw back to him.
Xerxes appeared in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, published by West End Games in 1987. It is used in an example scenario describing why a non-player Human character's base statistics are only 2D—indicating the number of dice that the gamemaster can roll when using a skill—rather than the 3D base statistics that player characters begin with. In this instance, the player character, Roark Garnet, is attempting to persuade a non-player character to assist him, which will be resolved by an opposed dice roll—the player's three dice against the gamemaster's two.
Xerxes I of Persia, also known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth King of Kings to rule the First Persian Empire. He was noted for leading his forces against King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.