Endor

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Climate:
  Temperate

• Terrain:
  Forests, plains, swamps

• 

From the Movies

Secluded in a remote corner of the Outer Rim Territories, the gas giant Endor and its verdant moon of the same name would easily have been overlooked by a busy galaxy were it not for the decisive battle that occurred there. Endor serves as the gravesite of both Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. It was here that the Rebel Alliance began the path of victory over the Galactic Empire.

Endor was the secret construction site for the second Death Star. Code-named the Sanctuary Moon, Endor was a green jewel that stood out against the dark reaches of space. Rivers wind through the thick canopy of ancient trees, and the forests extend high over the dark floors and the low mountains of the world.

Built in a clearing on the moon was an Imperial installation protected by an entire legion of Imperial troops. A massive shield generator projected a deflector shield around the half-completed Death Star. A daring Rebel strike team, under the command of General Han Solo, was assigned to destroy the generator. With the assistance of the native Ewoks, the Rebels defeated the Imperial troops, paving the way for a victorious space battle. This historic engagement is known as the Battle of Endor.

From the Expanded Universe

Endor is one of nine moons orbiting a lifeless gas giant in the Moddell sector. A convoluted hyperspace route and the enormous gravity well of its mother planet renders Endor a difficult place to visit, making it an ideal secret construction site for the Empire.

Though known as the forest moon, Endor has a wide variety of terrain. Forests cover much of the satellite, but there are also stretches of savannah and desert, as well as frozen ice caps.

The moon is teeming with life, including sentient beings such as the Ewoks, their distant cousins the Duloks, and subsentient aliens known as Yuzzums, Goraxes and Teeks. The forest floor becomes a dangerous hunting ground at night, when feral boarwolves, hanadaks and preducors stalk the wilderness for prey. The silvery gas giant is occasionally eclipsed by the winged silhouette of a mantigrue, a harbinger of the evil Night Spirit in Ewok lore.

Following their victory at the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance stationed there for a brief period, launching missions under their new name of the Alliance of Free Planets. They eventually relocated, leaving Endor to its quiet existence. Though some intrepid Ewoks left the moon, most stayed behind to live simpler lives. A small trading outpost run by a being known as Salfur keeps open the connection between Endor and the galaxy at large.

Behind the Scenes

The description of Endor's planet has changed in different publications. In the film Return of the Jedi, a distant orb can be seen along with the green moon, but it isn't large enough to be definitively labeled a planet. Special effects storyboards for this scene call one of these orbs "Planet Endor."

The Return of the Jedi novel describes the planet disappearing in a long-forgotten cataclysm, a theory supported in the original printing of the Dark Force Rising Sourcebook. The Ewok television movies, however, clearly showed a large gas giant in the Endor skies. The Truce at Bakura and Dark Apprentice novels also make reference to a large central planet visible from Endor's skies. The Ewoks animated series calls the planet Tana, but also shows a binary system, where all other sources show one sun. The twin suns can be attributed to Ewok lore and myth, rather than a real stellar phenomenon.

The Endor sequences were filmed in Smith River, in Northern California. Among some of the more mundane animals seen on Endor are ferrets, horses, llamas, goats, crows and of course, ducks.