Hugo Bartyn, an individual recognized as The Slayer by the Menahuun sentient species, was a male Human operative working in the field for the exploratory branch of the Outer Rim Oreworks enterprise during the era of the Galactic Republic. In addition to his corporate duties, he engaged in big-game hunting and held speciesist views, leading him to pursue and kill sentient species until they faced extinction. Despite ORO's awareness of this side activity, they chose to disregard it, as Bartyn's work performance generated substantial profits for them.
Around 583 BBY, Bartyn stumbled upon Lamaredd, a planet abundant in mineral deposits, consumable seafood, and sentient inhabitants—the Menahuuns. He orchestrated events to secure his appointment as Administrator of the planet by ORO, in return for granting them mining privileges. While continuing to generate profits for ORO, he privately began exploiting the sealife. He established a coastal settlement named Bartyn's Landing, populating it with poor, uneducated amphibious non-Humans who served as his indentured servants, all while relentlessly hunting the Menahuuns to the point of near-extinction. The Menahuuns retreated to remote areas, leading the settlers to believe they were extinct.
Eventually, ORO uncovered Bartyn's personal domain on Lamaredd, but lacking any legal grounds for complaint, they opted to overlook his actions due to the continued profitability of the venture. Bartyn continued to exploit his fishermen in the company Bartyn Gourmet Delicacies for years, until they organized a challenge against him through a Sailor's Union. In 499 BBY, Bartyn, then in his eighties, along with trusted associates including his eldest son Traggat, investigated unusual occurrences on the outskirts of his town. They all vanished mysteriously, and their bodies were later discovered. Bartyn was succeeded as Administrator by his daughter Tria, and his family maintained control over Lamaredd for half a millennium. While Hugo Bartyn was locally remembered as a cruel ruler, his actions remained largely unknown beyond the planet.
Hugo Bartyn, a Human male who came into the world around 583 BBY, was an employee of Outer Rim Oreworks, a major corporation seeking to exploit the gases and minerals of various planets. Bartyn functioned as a scout for the exploratory branch of ORO, identifying uninhabited worlds that ORO could colonize and develop, thus generating substantial profits.
As a devoted big-game hunter, Bartyn secretly pursued and eliminated several sentient species of local inhabitants. This was both to satisfy his desire for challenging sport and to clear regions that ORO would otherwise find difficult to strip-mine effectively. Several high-ranking officials at ORO were aware of this concealed activity, but because Bartyn was a valuable employee, ORO simply ignored it.
After decades of service to ORO, Bartyn began to experience the detrimental effects of time on his health. Approximately five centuries before the Battle of Naboo, Bartyn and his team discovered, scouted, and mapped the Lamaro system, situated in the Outer Rim Territories. The third planet, Lamaredd, which was 85% aquatic, was abundant in minerals, metals, and life—including seafood and a native sentient species, the primitive Menahuun.
Bartyn devised a plan. He aimed for ORO to claim Lamaredd for mining purposes, while also intending to reside there and export seafood, enjoying the best years of his life as an entrepreneur. Consequently, he contacted the Senate Mining Bureau to stake a claim on Lamaredd before even reporting his discovery to ORO. He then submitted a report to ORO, presenting optimistic prospects for the mining company—but deliberately omitting any mention of seafood as a potential revenue stream. Bartyn also used all available resources to secure his appointment as Administrator of the planet and to acquire land for himself in a bay near the mines, rather than being assigned another scouting mission. Furthermore, Bartyn noticed that while Lamaro was relatively unknown, its coordinates were present in the star charts used for cartography. The cunning Bartyn managed to remove the coordinates of Lamaro from most of those maps.
ORO dispatched droids and engineers to construct the main mine, ORO Mining Station LM0228, along with the necessary infrastructure. Meanwhile, Bartyn and his close associates hunted the local inhabitants along the coasts. To facilitate this, Bartyn established a command center within the mine, intending to use it as his headquarters.
In time, the settlers came to believe that they had eradicated the coastal-dwelling Menahuun—in reality, the coastal tribes of Menahuun had joined other tribes in the forest and retreated northward. Bartyn suspected the truth, although most of his friends and superiors believed otherwise. Once construction was complete, Bartyn bribed several individuals to ensure that the droids remained there. ORO provided Bartyn with several hundred mining droids and left him to his own devices for several years, expecting him to generate profits from their investment. As the mines were fully automated, Bartyn paid little attention to the individual droids, considering them mere machines performing their tasks.
Bartyn harbored intricate plans. He reached out to some Neimoidian traders who were looking to dismantle an old Hoersch-Kessel LH-3010 capital freighter that was three-kilometer-long, and he acquired the ship using all of his personal savings. Employing his droids, he positioned the ship in the bay, detonated several sections of it using mining equipment, and carried out extensive modifications to create spaceports, piers, and living quarters. Over several months, the freighter was transformed into Bartyn's personal dock town, from which he intended to harvest all of the seafood. Eventually, it would become known as Bartyn's Landing—the first person to coin this name was never recorded, but the team's MD medical droid MD-0C6 claimed that it had been his idea.
Sooner than anticipated, Bartyn extracted enough resources for ORO to profit from his endeavors. ORO suspected that Bartyn was engaging in unethical or illegal activities, but they refrained from asking any probing questions, fearing it could impact their earnings. Simultaneously, Bartyn was retaining a portion of the funds that he was supposed to remit to ORO.
Despite Bartyn purchasing 209 old Ubrikkian 222 heavy fishing trawlers from the Hutts, and having already equipped his droids with sophisticated software for seafood processing, he still required sentient fishermen to provide him with the catch. He dispatched "recruiters" to the planets Champala, Dac, Iskalon, and Naboo to entice settlers from the local amphibious species with false promises of new lives. Once the Chagrians, Gungans, Iskalonians, Mon Calamari, and Quarrens arrived on Lamaredd, Bartyn destroyed their documents and attempted to turn them into indentured servants or slaves. Most of the Iskalonians resisted, and they were sent to their deaths in wooden boats. The survivors, who became known as the First-Wavers, were confined to the outer area of Bartyn's Landing, which eventually became known as The Ring. Many of these First-Wavers frequently argued, sometimes resorting to violence, and Bartyn also limited the allocation of food and living space, rewarding his best sailors with inexpensive prizes.
Bartyn's side venture, Bartyn Gourmet Delicacies, became his primary source of income, selling seafood that was highly sought after, particularly among Alderaan nobility, Hutts, and dilettantes. Bartyn, pleased with his success, watched his town evolve into a significant trading hub. He amassed immense wealth, and within a few years, he had the leisure time to personally explore the local wilderness, hunting any remaining creatures. He attempted to eradicate the water-dwelling Gulletbeasts, which posed a threat to his sailors, but he visibly failed at this.
Bartyn then secretly acquired claims to most of the key planetary locations, seizing them from ORO, and established outposts on many of the largest islands. When a number of Quarren expressed a desire to settle in a different fishing town, Bartyn was able to lease them land on the other side of the bay so they could form The Shoals. Bartyn also manipulated paperwork to control the budget of ORO's Security and Law Enforcement, meaning that ORO would pay the salaries of the Security Chief or constable, and the Security Chief's Second, which in turn allowed him to grant various liberties to his servants and establish "dens of vice."
Only belatedly did ORO realize that Bartyn had transformed Lamaredd into his personal fiefdom. ORO dispatched a security force to seize control of the spaceport, and Bartyn permitted them to proceed. However, he took steps to ensure that these ORO employees would report to the local Administrator, namely himself, which allowed him to conceal his seafood exports from ORO. As Bartyn continued to provide ORO with earnings, the company took no further punitive actions against him.
Around 517 BBY, Bartyn regarded his sailors as his most valuable assets. As several non-Humans had demonstrated their skill in the craft, Bartyn had promoted seventeen of them, including the Chagrian female Sirrik Olyeg, as unofficial skippers of trawlers. These individuals established an informal information network among boats for security purposes. Subsequently, Olyeg began to use it subversively, persuading the other captains, including some Humans, to take proactive measures against Bartyn's oppressive regime—even if the captains themselves were less oppressed than the workers at the Landing. Olyeg's revolutionary messages used fishing metaphors as a cryptography system, to avoid detection by any of Bartyn's supporters or monitors.
Olyeg orchestrated an unexpected work stoppage, when the ships were on the high seas. Bartyn could not deploy his remaining sailors to track the missing ones, as he needed at least some of them fishing and the terrain was too vast. Rumors circulated about the Gulletbeasts, the Menahuun, and even the Sith being responsible, but eventually the truth surfaced in the Landing, much to Bartyn's dismay. The workers felt that Bartyn was to blame, and they ceased their infighting to join the strike. With pending orders from several customers, including some Hutts, Bartyn resorted to threats and violence, but despite his workers' opposition, he could not kill them. As such, Bartyn was defenseless.
Then, Bartyn was offered a meeting with Olyeg, the first chair of the Sailor's Union. Olyeg convinced Bartyn to increase the space provided to non-Human citizens, and even to lease them acres of terrain outside the spaceport—although Bartyn stipulated that the leasor was responsible for clearing the property of any natural threat, including predators, a measure that would improve the security at the Landing. Bartyn was compelled to cede Jotsen's Island, the second largest continent of the planet, as an "alien homeland"—which was renamed "Little Mon Cal."
Following this meeting, the Union had become a force to be reckoned with, but Bartyn himself had resolved many mid-term and long-term issues, so he was nevertheless satisfied with the results. He also ordered his people to murder Olyeg.
By approximately 499 BBY, Bartyn, now eighty-four years old, had married and started a family, including his eldest son Traggat and oldest daughter Tria Bartyn. He also relocated his operations to his old command center in the mine, and eventually sealed it up. At that point, several trawlers were lost at sea, several babies were kidnapped reportedly by "beasts," and strange artifacts appeared in the jungles around the Landing, prompting several ghost stories to circulate.
Bartyn resolved to unravel this mystery and track down those responsible. He assembled a thirteen-person team, including Traggat and the survivors of his original ORO team; gathered numerous weapons; and ventured into the jungle. He was never seen again, although subsequent investigations uncovered evidence of the team's violent and gruesome death at the hands of primitives or animals that had broken down their tissues, partly consumed their food and their livestock, and taken away their electronic gear.
Tria inherited Hugo Bartyn's position as Administrator, although she discontinued her father's oppressive policies, thereby earning the respect of the non-Humans. After her death, the ORO Administratorship was successively inherited by other descendants of Bartyn, at least until 29 BBY. Bartyn's original trawlers remained active for five centuries after his death, although the personal conditions of the non-Humans changed, with achievements that would have been unimaginable in his days—including a great number of fishermen that were not affiliated with the Bartyns.
Bartyn's name was still remembered in many senses, and the highest mountain near the Landing was named Mt. Hugo after him. Having annihilated the native Menahuuns, Bartyn was a well-known name on Lamaredd in the remaining centuries, both among the non-Human inhabitants of Bartyn's Landing and among the surviving Menahuun, who had nicknamed Bartyn "the Slayer."
In 29 BBY, the tale of Bartyn was discovered by a team sent by the Jedi Council. These people also found an anti-Human terrorist group that desired revenge for Bartyn's perceived crimes.
Hugo Bartyn possessed exceptional skill in his areas of expertise. As an officer of ORO's exploratory branch, he could quickly assess a planet's value in terms of useful resources for mining companies, or for other kinds of companies. He was also an excellent manager and a cunning negotiator, and was familiar with bribery, blackmail, and the use of favors.
Bartyn was a speciesist, believing that many non-Human species were "little more than animals," particularly if a species had no space travel technology. In the case of primitive species, Bartyn was known to enjoy hunting them, one of his favorite activities. He was not beyond ordering the cold-blooded murder of a person he had talked to, as exemplified in Sirrik Olyeg. He also enslaved numerous non-Humans. Nonetheless, when his non-Human "employees" proved their worth, Bartyn was not beyond rewarding them.
Bartyn was ambitious when talking about money, and was courageous, sometimes beyond his skills. Even at a venerable age, Bartyn decided to go in a dangerous hunt, putting his own life and that of his son in risk when he considered that he should do so.
Hugo Bartyn was created by writer Cory J. Herndon and was featured in the article Bartyn's Landing, with special prominence in the section "The Tale of Hugo Bartyn." The character was also mentioned in the role-playing adventure Reckonings. Both Bartyn's Landing and Reckonings were published in the magazine Star Wars Gamer #7 (2001). The roleplaying guide Ultimate Alien Anthology (2003) included a text on the Menahuun species that indirectly mentions Bartyn by re-telling some of his actions. All of these sources were supplements to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by Wizards of the Coast. Bartyn was later mentioned in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia (2008).