Star Wars Lore

From the Wookiepedia.

The Daughters of Allya

At that time, however, a rogue Jedi Knight named Allya was banished to Dathomir by the Jedi Council. She took the leadership of the survivors, teaching the ways of the Force to the exiles, and eventually to her own children. In later centuries, Allya was remembered as single-handedly transforming Dathomiri society, credited with enslaving the entire male population under her leadership, turning the rancors from predators to friends, pets and war mounts, and codifying her teachings in the Book of Law. Some accounts even seem to suppose that she was a lone woman within an otherwise entirely male population. But in reality, these practices may have evolved over several generations, and the parallel with the matriarchal social structure of the rancors may be significant, especially given the symbiosis of the Human warrior-women and their mounts; but Allya's leadership undoubtedly laid the foundations of a unique culture, dominated by Force-using women who regarded themselves collectively as her descendants, known to outsiders as the Witches of Dathomir.

Over the centuries, the total Human population of Dathomir grew to perhaps just over five thousand, based in a relatively narrow coastal area of one of the planet's continents: even under the New Republic, more than 90% of the planet remained unexplored. The Dathomiri came to be divided into a number of reasonably permanent local clan communities, which took their names from significant geographical features such as Singing Mountain, Frenzied River, and Misty Falls. These clans, each just a few hundred strong, accounted for almost the entire planetary population, but there were also small numbers of exiles who lived outside the clan communities, including the planet's dark-siders, called Nightsisters, who at times existed in sufficient numbers to form a distinct clan. In total, the clans could probably put at least a thousand warrior-women into the field, each of them a trained Force-user and many of them riding rancor mounts.

The strength of the Dathomiri was discovered by the Jedi Order in around 340 BBY, when the Jedi Academy ship Chu'unthor crashed into a tar pit on Dathomir. All attempts to retrieve the wreck were blocked by the natives, although it seems that some contacts were forged across the battle-lines: one young warrior-woman, Rell, who would survive to meet Luke Skywalker in the days of the New Republic, reminisced about Yoda as an "old flirt".

At some point, Dathomir appears to have been part of the Republic, and was classed as part of Quelii Sector, but eventually, it fell into the space under the rule of the Drackmarians — another matriarchal warrior race, but this time methane-breathing aliens, for whom the planet held little real interest.

Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War

In 31 BBY, the remaining Kwi were decimated by a clan of Nightsisters during their attempt to access the secrets of the Infinity Gate. They intended to use the device to destroy Coruscant, though their plot was thwarted by the Jedi Quinlan Vos, who was able to make contact with the Kwa, and assumed the role of Temple Guardian, to redirect the deadly wave aimed at Coruscant back at the Infinity Gate. Only the scattered ruins of the Infinity Gate and the Star Temple were left, and the Kwi disappeared once more to roam the deserts.

After the Great Jedi Purge, the fabled village of Aurilia was believed to be located somewhere on Dathomir, and it was rumored that Force-sensitive individuals, perhaps even Jedi, lived here in exile during the reign of the Galactic Empire. However, the Empire soon sent a fleet into Quelli Sector to wrest territory from the Drackmarians, and Dathomir was claimed for the Empire by an officer named Zsinj, then commanding the Star Destroyer Iron Fist. Around 2 BBY Emperor Palpatine reestablished a penal colony for important political prisoners, while the Imperial garrison hunted the remaining Kwi to near-extinction.

Around this time, Tyber Zann and Urai Fen of the Zann Consortium arrived on the planet, seeking one who could unlock a Sith Holocron in Tyber's possession. They found an imprisoned Nightsister, Silri, capable of doing so, and freed her from an Imperial prison.

Shortly after the Imperials arrived, an exile from the Singing Mountain Clan named Gethzerion began to form a new clan of Nightsisters with Imperial encouragement, but when Palpatine realized the threat they posed in the Force, he quickly placed the planet under interdict. Two Star Destroyers were stationed in the system to prevent further contact with the surface, and Gethzerion and her clan then enslaved the stranded Imperial garrison and their prisoners.

As the war with the Drackmarians continued, Quellii Sector was raised to the level of an Oversector, and Zsinj became the admiral commanding the local Sector Group one of the largest combat fleets in the Empire. After the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY he refused to recognize the authority of the Imperial Ruling Council and declared himself a Warlord, quickly coming to rival the power of both the legitimist Imperial authorities and the rising New Republic. Dathomir became key to his plans with the discovery of vast lodes of the key shipbuilding metals of neutronium, lommite, and zersium on the moon Koratas, and Zsinj had Rancor Base built in orbit of the planet to exploit the world's resources.

New Republic

Han Solo won the deed to Dathomir from Drackmarian Warlord Omogg in a game of sabacc in 8 ABY. Han's kidnapping of Leia Organa to the planet led to a chain of events that changed Dathomir forever. Luke Skywalker and Isolder followed Solo and Organa to Dathomir and encountered the Kwi and then the Singing Mountain Clan. The following conflict resulted in the destruction of both the Nightsisters and Warlord Zsinj. Free from the tyranny of the Nightsisters, the Dathomiri entered an alliance with the New Republic, and Han Solo gave over his claim to the planet to Augwynne Djo, matriarch of the Singing Mountain Clan; while Augwynne's new title as Queen of Dathomir was little more than a constitutional formality, it also ennobled her granddaughter Teneniel Djo, and enabled her to marry Isolder, with whom she had fallen in love.

Several Dathomiri subsequently went on to train with Luke Skywalker at his Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4, including Kirana Ti and Damaya, but in 12 ABY, the forces of the Imperial Remnant returned to Dathomir, in the form of an expedition searching for the Infinity Gate, led by Sigit Ranth and General Vit.

The Imperials overpowered the small New Republic enclave on the planet, and struck an alliance with a group of Dathomiri who styled themselves as a reborn clan of Nightsisters. Although Ranth soon departed the world when he discovered that Infinity Gate was inoperable, General Vit and his garrison remained, tasked with imposing Imperial authority on Dathomir in alliance with the Nightsisters, investigating the Jedi artifacts on the Chu'unthor, and recruiting the planet's Force-sensitive warriors for the service of the Empire.

Over the next months, Vit and his men reconditioned the old Imperial prison facility, and began rounding up the hostile Dathomiri and incarcerating them. Soon, the Singing Mountain Clan had been imprisoned in the camp, and prison columns from the defeated Dreaming River Clan were being marched under guard to join them. At this point, a miscellaneous group of heroes and rogues arrived on the planet, including renegade special forces officer and Jedi Praxeum trainee Dal Konur, as well as Imperial Royal Guard Kir Kanos. Working together with the Dathomiri resistance, they succeeded in ousting Vit and the Imperials; but neither the Empire nor the Nightsisters had been permanently destroyed.

In 19 ABY, Brakiss arrived on Dathomir. A Force-sensitive Imperial Intelligence agent working with the faction known as the Second Imperium, he infiltrated the Great Canyon Clan and transformed them into a new group of Nightsisters, to serve as a recruiting pool for the Shadow Academy. Brakiss also engineered a social revolution, so that the new Nightsisters came to treat males as equals—adding escaped slaves from the other clans to their ranks. By 22 ABY, some Great Canyon Clan warriors, like Captain Garowyn, had already undergone thorough training at the Shadow Academy, and received commissions in the Imperial military.

Later that year, however, Tenel Ka and Luke Skywalker infiltrated the Great Canyon and from there were able to reach the Shadow Academy. The clan's strength would be subsequently slashed by their defeat in the Second Imperium's attack on Yavin 4.

By the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong War, Dathomir was once again under New Republic protection, and although the planet fell to the Yuuzhan Vong during their initial attack in 27 ABY, the invaders soon realized that the native "Jeedai" were going to be harder to subdue. Dathomir was never fully conquered, and after the war's end, Jedi Master Streen, with the help of Dathomiri Jedi Kirana Ti and Damaya, attempted to establish a new Jedi Praxeum on Dathomir in 30 ABY. In the following years, Jacen Solo came to the planet and trained in the arts of the indigenous witches.