The Sun Runner, a massive 400-meter Alpha-class heavy transport manufactured by Corellia StarDrive, disappeared circa 4000 BBY. At the time of its disappearance, Margrave Octan of the Darpa sector was using it to relocate his family, along with 867 colonists, to Nallastia, a moon orbiting Fondor in the Tapani sector. The Margrave, a member of the Royal Octans—a powerful family that amassed their fortune as space pirates—had three power gems aboard the ship. These gems were capable of disabling magnetic defense shields and were historically used by his ancestors to conquer enemy vessels and seize their assets.
Only a week following the arrival of the colonists on the satellite, the colonial transport vanished during a supply expedition to the nearby planet Mrlsst. Despite numerous searches, the ship—identifiable by a golden circle bisected by a white line—and the three invaluable power gems, thereafter known as the Lost Stars of Nallastia, were never recovered. Over the subsequent four millennia, the Margrave's descendants, who ruled the terraformed jungle-moon, along with the inhabitants of Nallastia and Fondor, persisted in their search for the missing starship.
In 23 BBY, Groodo the Hutt devised a scheme involving a dilapidated counterfeit of the Sun Runner. The goal of this scheme was the destruction of both the Fondor Shipyards and its associated surface factories.