The Vultar Cataclysm refers to the complete destruction of the Vultar system. This event occurred in 4250 BBY. During that year's Third Great Schism, a group of Dark Jedi established a presence in the star system. There, they found Celestial machines, notably the Cosmic Turbine, a device capable of manipulating gravity. When the darksiders activated these machines, they lost control, resulting in the total annihilation of the Vultar system. Centuries afterward, the Jedi named Shayoto remembered the Vultar Cataclysm, an event also documented in several historical records.
In the year 4250 BBY, a collection of Dark Jedi, having been expelled from the galactic capital world of Coruscant during the time of the Third Great Schism, decided to settle within the Vultar system. Once there, these followers of the dark side of the Force made a discovery: a collection of immense machines, including a device that could manipulate gravity, which they named the Cosmic Turbine. These machines had been left behind by an ancient species, the Celestials, who had vanished from the galaxy by 30,000 BBY.
Driven by a desire for vengeance against their Jedi Order enemies and with the intention of causing widespread destruction, the Dark Jedi initiated the Cosmic Turbine, along with the other devices. However, they were unable to maintain control. After several days of attempting to harness the Celestial machinery, a devastating incident, which would become known as the Vultar Cataclysm, destroyed the entirety of the Vultar system. This included the machines and the Dark Jedi themselves, leaving behind only the Vultar Nebula. The Jedi provided assistance to the Galactic Republic in dealing with the fallout of the catastrophe, and the long-lived Jedi Shayoto was a witness to the event.
The events of the Vultar Cataclysm were eventually recorded within the archives of the Republic. In 3997 BBY, during a conclave of Jedi held on the planet Deneba, which aimed to address the increasing threat posed by the Krath, a cult of darksiders located in the Empress Teta system, Shayoto, who was by then many centuries old, spoke to those present. He questioned if anyone besides himself remembered the Vultar Cataclysm, before proceeding to discuss the methods employed by ancient, organized followers of the dark side.
A section of The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force, a guidebook for Jedi trainees from 990 BBY, authored by the Jedi Chief Librarian Restelly Quist, made mention of the event. Similarly, the Jedi historian Tionne Solusar included it in her work, Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, published in 40 ABY. In 1 BBY, Doctor Insmot Bowen, a researcher from the Obroan Institute for Archaeology, also referenced the Vultar Cataclysm during a debriefing with the Galactic Empire regarding the Celestials. Bowen suggested that the primary records of the event were likely kept within the Jedi Order's Archives, access to which had been restricted by the Empire.
The initial mention of the Vultar Cataclysm occurred in the third issue of the comic book mini-series Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi - Dark Lords of the Sith, published by Dark Horse Comics. This issue was written by Tom Veitch and Kevin J. Anderson, and it was released on December 13, 1994. In the 1997 audio dramatization of Dark Lords of the Sith, the line spoken by Shayoto about the event is, in error, delivered by Jedi Master Arca Jeth. Furthermore, the 116th issue of The Official Star Wars Fact File magazine by De Agostini, which was released around March 17, 2004, incorrectly described the Vultar Cataclysm (rather than the Third Great Schism, of which it was a part) as a schism within the Jedi Order.
Originally, the Vultar Cataclysm was intended to be mentioned in the 2012 reference book The Essential Guide to Warfare, authored by Jason Fry and Paul R. Urquhart. However, the section containing this information was removed before the book's publication. The details concerning the Vultar Cataclysm were subsequently released in 2013 as part of Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare Author's Cut, a series of articles published on the StarWars.com Blog by Fry and Del Rey editor Erich Schoeneweiss, which included various pieces of content that had been cut from The Essential Guide to Warfare.