Reclamation Service Tatooine expedition

Back in 3643 BBY, the Sith Empire came across a damaged shuttle adrift in space. It was traced back to a Czerka Corporation research base situated on the Outer Rim desert planet Tatooine. Czerka had boasted that the artifacts they possessed from Tatooine were "the find of the millennium", capable of energy throughputs comparable to a sun. The base mysteriously vanished a month after the shuttle's launch, and Czerka never returned. Consequently, Sith Lord Darth Silthar and Imperial Reclamation Service Captain Barden Golah led an expedition to Tatooine. Their goal was to locate the base and the enigmatic artifacts it housed.

The Imperial military took control of the Tatooine settlement of Mos Ila, seizing it from the Exchange criminal organization, and established a garrison there. This city would serve as the expedition's operational headquarters. When four Imperial heroes landed on the planet, they were directed to the Reclamation Service's research center in Mos Ila and joined the archaeological mission. The expedition discovered that a Sons of Palawa settlement near the city possessed experimental battle droids, thought to be of Czerka origin. These droids could be examined to aid in finding the lost Czerka base. The Imperial heroes were sent to the settlement to retrieve the droids' verbobrains for analysis. In the Sons' scrapyard, they fought and defeated roughly sixteen tribal members and their droids who stood in their way.

Even though the Empire had ousted the Exchange from Mos Ila upon arrival, the gang continued its criminal activities within the city. While undertaking this task for the Reclamation Service, the heroes sought to uncover the Exchange's plans. They started by acquiring communication codes from the bodies of Exchange infiltrators. This allowed them to access encrypted communicator pads throughout the city, leading them to a communications station. From there, they lured out the local Exchange leader, defeated him, and obtained the Exchange's attack plans to retake the city, which they then handed over to Imperial authorities.

Upon returning to the service research center, the verbobrains were analyzed by Reclamation Service Lieutenant Keighlah. She discovered they had undergone memory wipes, but also learned that the Sons had purchased the droids from Jawas. Darth Silthar informed the heroes that he had seen a band of Jawas near the city in his dreams, and they set off to show the verbobrains to the Jawas and inquire about their origins.

Arriving at the Jawa trading post of Camp Can'ali, the heroes were told by Jawa Trade Master Thint that the Jawas had salvaged the droids from the wreckage of an old transport module in the desert, which had since been lost to sandstorms. The Jawas provided the heroes with a lockbox, recovered from the wreckage alongside the droids, which they were unable to open or understand its purpose.

After delivering the lockbox to the Reclamation Service center in Mos Ila, Cpt. Golah identified it as a Czerka stasis crate, used for transporting samples. Initial analysis revealed that the crate contained an alien device, roughly spherical, over 10,000 years old, and contained within an energy field. While Darth Silthar departed on a pilgrimage, acting on his vision concerning the native Sand People, the expedition moved to their forward research outpost to further study the device within the crate.

Upon the Imperial heroes' arrival at Outpost Varath, Cpt. Golah informed them about Darth Silthar's situation, explaining that the expedition had lost the tracking signal from his speeder after Silthar had summoned a lightning storm in the Dune Sea. Golah instructed the heroes to acquire a compass held by the Sand People's spirit guides to locate Silthar.

Given that the Sand People were becoming a significant impediment to Imperial operations in the region, the heroes, while searching for Darth Silthar, dealt a blow to their tribes in the Shattered Basin. They defeated at least sixty members of their forces, poisoning several of their water supplies, and killing their hero, Kortawa the Hunt Master. His prized hunting trophy was recovered from his body and delivered to Imperial authorities as proof of his death.

The heroes obtained a compass from one of the Sand People guides and used it to find a wounded and dying Darth Silthar in the nearby Joroshe Spirit Cave. Silthar told the heroes that the Force had drawn him to the desert, where he sensed Czerka's discovery and had a vision of a white room. He murdered Sand People tribals, stealing their thoughts to locate the cave where he discovered Sand People paintings depicting the location of the Czerka base in the natives' forbidden lands. The heroes recorded the paintings before leaving the cave, abandoning Silthar's corpse, and reporting to Cpt. Golah at the Reclamation Service forward outpost.

As the heroes recounted the details of Silthar's death and the discovery of the paintings, several Reclamation Service archaeologists began to transform when the dampeners on the lockbox obtained from the Jawas were deactivated. A transformed Lt. Keighlah spoke of a figure called "the Imprisoned One" in a white room before attacking the expedition.

The heroes defeated several of the transformed archaeologists, but one, Perrin, managed to escape the outpost and headed towards a nearby Sons of Palawa settlement. Anticipating a potential outbreak, Cpt. Golah ordered the heroes to go to the village and defeat Perrin before he could infect the villagers. Following Reclamation Service contamination site protocols, the heroes set out for the village, located in a nearby cave, armed with baradium explosives to contain any potential outbreak.

Inside the tribal settlement cave, the heroes discovered that the village was overrun with infected Palawa warriors. The heroes defeated many infected and non-infected tribal warriors, as well as Perrin, while placing the explosives at strategic points within the cave. After leaving the cave, the heroes detonated the explosives, successfully containing the infestation.

Afterward, Cpt. Golah sent a squad to assess the condition of the village. Squad member Private Tannrel reported that the explosives had atomized all matter within the village and that the squad had avoided engaging a small group of Palawa scouts returning to the village. Tannrel suggested that the Palawa might seek revenge on the Empire at a later date, and notified local Imperial authorities accordingly.

At the Reclamation Service outpost, the surviving expedition members reactivated the Czerka lockbox's stasis field to prevent the artifact from powering up again and causing another incident. The heroes returned and presented the recording of the mural from the Sand People cave, which revealed the general location of Czerka's base. Cpt. Golah prepared a probe droid to scan for signs of the base and dispatched the heroes to the Dune Sea to find evidence of Czerka's presence.

After deploying the droid in the Dune Sea, it locked onto an underground power signature, presumably at the Czerka base. The heroes performed additional scans at five Czerka relay towers, unlocking recorded messages that revealed the fate of the Czerka base, ultimately pinpointing its precise location.

The Reclamation Service Tatooine expedition was featured as the Tatooine planetary story arc for all four Imperial player character classes in the BioWare-LucasArts video game Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2011. The arc culminated in the discovery of a Rakatan mind prison that housed the intelligence of the Imprisoned One, an ancient Rakatan. This conclusion conflicted with the Republic planetary story arc for Tatooine, which focused on a Republic Strategic Information Service investigation into Czerka activities on the planet and also ended with the discovery of the Imprisoned One in the abandoned Czerka base.

The Imprisoned One and his mind prison had previously appeared in the BioWare-produced video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in 2003.

After player characters obtain the Czerka droid verbobrains from the Sons of Palawa settlement outside Mos Ila, they have the option to leave peacefully, without attacking the remaining Sons, by choosing the light side path.

When meeting with the Jawas outside Mos Ila to determine the origin of the Czerka droids, players can choose the light side option to accept Trade Master Thint's offer of information in exchange for clearing a path for the Jawas' sandcrawler.

As Darth Silthar lies dying in the Sand People's cave, players can choose the light side option to comfort him as he passes away, rather than murdering him.

When Imperial player characters arrive at the main Sons of Palawa settlement to contain the outbreak caused by the Czerka artifact, they can choose the light side option of allying with and working with the uninfected Sons to purge the settlement, instead of killing them.

After discovering the Imprisoned One and defeating his minions at the end of the story arc, players can select the dark side option of bringing the Imprisoned One's mind prison to the Empire intact to learn from him, or the light side option of destroying the mind prison to contain the threat he poses. If the dark side option is chosen, players receive an in-game message from Cpt. Golah after completing the story arc, where Golah praises the player character's contribution to the expedition's mission and details the progress made by the Imperial Science Bureau in examining the Imprisoned One's mind prison. If the light side option was chosen, Golah sends a different message explaining the expedition team's wrap-up of an examination and lockdown of the Czerka base, and the team's dispersal to assignments on the planets Hoth and Ziost.