Tauntaza's fortress

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"What's [Vader] doing down there?"
"Dying…like everything else we touch."
―Tauntaza and an officer[3]

Tauntaza's fortress, also known as Tauntaza's facility or the Death Machine, was a mobile fortress constructed on the planet Gabredor III by Governor Tauntaza of the Galactic Empire. The fortress was able to absorb organic life energy from planets and convert it into power. Although Tauntaza had affiliated herself with the Crimson Dawn criminal organization, she had been following instructions from Emperor Palpatine in constructing the fortress,[3] which involved a cost in the order of billions of credits.[2]

Tauntaza escaped to her fortress and activated it, beginning to drain the life from the planet and causing a severe sandstorm.[1] The droid ZED-6-7 determined that the entire planet would be reduced to a desert in forty-eight hours. Vader ordered Admiral Firmus Piett aboard his flagship, the Executor, to fire on the fortress, but its shields, powered by the energy it was draining from the planet, were strong enough to resist the blast. Vader approached the facility and utilized an astromech droid carrying his lightsaber to infiltrate the underside of the fortress, disabling the extractor and carving an entrance. Tauntaza's crew recommended she evacuate, but the governor instead connected her suit of armor to the facility's energy tanks in order to use the power against Vader. Although Vader was able to destroy the facility, Tauntaza escaped, and Vader learned she had been following orders from the Emperor.[3]

The Alliance to Restore the Republic would later recover Tauntaza's fortress, with a group under the command of a general moving it to an uninhabited planet in the Outer Rim in order to repair it and use it for their own purposes. However, Vader, who had since joined Administrator Sly Moore's Schism Imperial, a group of Imperials dissatisfied with the Emperor that included Tauntaza, reclaimed the facility alongside the former governor and his own cyborg M.A.R. Corps. Vader and Tauntaza ordered the machine's crew to activate it, killing the rebels in the vicinity, before declaring that they would continue repairing the facility.[2]

While in possession of the Death Machine, the Schism Imperial deployed it on the Outer Rim planet Caranthanax B in an attempt for Administrator Moore to kill Luke Skywalker. Moore threatened to activate the machine if Skywalker would not turn himself in.[5] After Darth Vader intervened in Moore's plans to eliminate the Jedi, he eventually activated the Death Machine to give himself massive amounts of power, which he used to eliminate a legion of Stormtroopers and Sith Eternal cultists mounted on juvenile summa-verminoth. This activation devastated much of the southern pole of the planet.[6]

The power capsules produced by activation of the machine could be used in many ways, such as powering cybernetics or energy weapons. Darth Vader and other members of the Schism Imperial used the power capsules to power Vader's Kyber-infused electrostaff and Zaly Shield. One merchant estimated that a single power capsule could power the spaceport city of Mos Eisley for an entire month.[6]

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Appearances

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Darth Vader (2020) 25
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Darth Vader (2020) 43
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Darth Vader (2020) 27
  4. ↑ The flashbacks of Star Wars (2020) 50 take place approximately twenty-two years after Sheev Palpatine's ascension to Emperor, which Star Wars: Timelines dates to 19 BBY, meaning they must occur around 3 ABY. The flashbacks also take place after the events of Star Wars (2020) 43, which occur after the Star Wars: Dark Droids crossover event, an event StarWars.com Charles Soule Unleashes Dark Droids on StarWars.com (backup link) places after Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters, which is dated to 3 ABY by Timelines. As Darth Vader (2020) 25 takes place between War of the Bounty Hunters and Dark Droids, its events must take place around 3 ABY.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Darth Vader (2020) 49
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Darth Vader (2020) 50