From Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki.

There are two conflicting canon sources for this article, from Knights of the Old Republic II and The New Essential Chronology. A cohesive timeline has not yet been devised by Lucasfilm Ltd. Editor discretion is advised.

The Battle of Uba IV was a battle in the New Sith Wars. At some point during the conflict, the Old Republic conducted a preemptive military operation against the Ubese species, which turned into a disaster that almost lead to the extinction of the species.

Ironically, a very similar circumstance happened to the Ubese almost 2,000 years earlier. Sometime before 3,951 BBY the Republic had bombed and irradiated one of their colony worlds leading some Ubese clans to have an intense hatred toward the Republic and the Jedi who failed to stop them.^[2]

Backstory and the purge

For centuries previous, the Ubese had begun manufacturing weaponry in a bid to become more competitive and to spread their influence throughout the galaxy.

However, among these were weapons banned since the foundation of the Republic. Upon further investigation by local sector observers, the combined worlds launched a preemptive strike in the form of a tactical planetary bombardment of the Ubese weapons manufacturing plants. Unfortunately for the Ubese, the bombardment set off the largest share of their tactical weapons of mass destruction, utterly destroying three out of the four inhabited worlds in the system (Uba I, II, and V), with the only survivors found on Uba IV.

Ashamed of their actions, the Old Republic covered up the entire affair. The Republic sector authorities refused all relief aid in the aftermath, even going so far as to wipe the very coordinates of the Uba system off the galactic navcharts, and decades later, the average galactic citizen had never even heard of the Ubese near-extinction. Some of the Ubese, however, did escape, and managed to secrete themselves away on various worlds, blaming the Republic for turning their world into a radioactive ball and the Jedi for not acting in time to save them.

These Ubese refugees managed to find employment with various crimelords and other shadowy figures, forging themselves into weapons: well-trained, highly disciplined, and utterly unstoppable in their hatred of the Republic and the Jedi.

Behind the scenes

The timeframe of the Battle of Uba IV presented in the The New Essential Chronology conflicts with the previous official account given in the game Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords—in the game's storyline, a number of the Ubese survivors from the battle had taken up employment with the Quarren Exchange crimelord Visquis on Nar Shaddaa, acting as personal grenadiers within his private sanctuary. The game describes their clan despising the Jedi for not interceding in the Republic bombing of their planet.

The information presented in The New Essential Chronology does, however, more closely mesh with the account given in the role-playing game supplement Alien Encounters.

Dan Wallace explains the discrepancy as follows:

It's been pointed out that the NEC places the destruction of the Ubese homeworld (forcing the Ubese to wear breath masks like Leia in ROTJ) at approx. 2000-1500 BBY -- however, the game Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, set in 3951 BBY, features breathmasked Ubese. It's a discrepancy for now. (For the record, I placed the event where I did to correspond with WEG's Alien Anthology, and was unaware of KOTOR2's Ubese at the time.)

In the The Essential Atlas the event is finally dated as happening in 1,800 BBY.

Sources

• The New Essential Chronology
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
• Alien Encounters
• The Essential Atlas

Notes and references