The Graceful Promising was identified as a Vontorian treasure ship. By 10 BBY, it had broken apart and found its final resting place in an orbit around a dark star. Subsequently, the Pirate Queen known as Maz Kanata hid a stash of kiirium on this starship. This stash was later retrieved by the smuggler Han Solo, who received assistance from Rebel Alliance Lieutenant Caluan Ematt and a group of rebel Pathfinders, sometime between 0 ABY and 3 ABY. The events surrounding the Graceful Promising and the recovery of its hidden treasure were recorded in the logbook titled the Smuggler's Guide.
The Vontorian treasure ship, named the Graceful Promising, met its end when it shattered around 10 BBY. Its wreckage eventually stabilized in a tight orbit circling a dark star situated on the eastern fringes of the galaxy. The infamous Pirate Queen, Maz Kanata, chose this location to conceal a valuable cache of kiirium, complete with an antitamper sub-space alarm, aboard the abandoned starship. She then marked its location on a map detailing her various hidden treasure caches throughout the galaxy, which was included in the logbook, the Smuggler's Guide.
Sometime between 0 ABY and 3 ABY, the human smuggler Han Solo came into possession of the Smuggler's Guide. Motivated by the need to settle a debt with the crime lord Jabba Desilijic Tiure, Solo decided to attempt to access Kanata's hidden kiirium aboard the Graceful Promising. He considered this particular cache one of the pirate queen's most difficult to reach, but thought it was worth the risk. Solo even made a note of his intentions on Kanata's map.
Solo was well aware of the challenges presented by the gravitational shear caused by the nearby dark star. To assist him in this mission to the Graceful Promising, he enlisted the help of Alliance Lieutenant Caluan Ematt and a team of rebel Pathfinders. Before embarking on the mission, the smuggler documented his plans in the Smuggler's Guide, including a picture of the vessel. Interestingly, he misspelled the ship's name as the Grateful Promising at one point in his entry.
Ultimately, Solo's team succeeded in retrieving the kiirium from the damaged vessel. Solo then sold the recovered goods and recorded the successful outcome of the mission in the same logbook. Later, the book fell into the hands of the Keredian cyborg criminal Cycyed Ock. In an annotation added to Solo's entry, Ock expressed his disappointment at being beaten to Kanata's cache aboard the Graceful Promising, claiming that he possessed "a few techniques" that would have been useful in such an endeavor.
The Graceful Promising was first mentioned in Star Wars: Smuggler's Guide, a reference book written by Daniel Wallace in 2018. Adrián Rodriguez created the illustration of the starship.