Forest moon of Endor
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| Distance from Core | 43,300 light years | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Suns | 2 | ||
| Population | 30 million | ||
| Points of Interest | Imperial Shield Generator (destroyed during Galactic Civil War) | ||
| Surface water | 8% | ||
| Affiliation | Galactic Empire, Rebel Alliance, Ewok | ||
In the fictional universe of Star Wars, the forest moon of Endor, also known as Sanctuary Moon, is a moon which is home to the Ewoks and above which the second Death Star was constructed in Return of the Jedi.
Endor's moon is also the location of the two Ewok TV movies Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, as well as the adventures of the animated series Star Wars: Ewoks. The moon is also home to deadly giant Goraxes, tall and timid Yuzzums, rodent-like Teeks, vicious condor dragons and a settlement of offplanet reptilian marauders.
Endor itself is not the moon, but instead the planet which the moon orbits (or orbited). The planet Endor is never visible in the film, a fact which the novelization explains by asserting that it was destroyed some time earlier and that the moon now orbits its star in a planetary orbit of its own. It should be noted that in two scenes in the film, a pinkish planet can be seen in the background, in the vicinity of the forest moon, though the two bodies are never seen at the same time. This, coupled with the fact that a moon without a planet should itself be defined as a planet in its own right, has caused some fans to speculate that this pinkish planet is in fact Endor.
The moon resembles Earth in many ways; however, it seems to have more landmasses than oceans. The landmasses are primarily covered with thick forests of massive ancient pine trees, and it has at least one desert region. Endor does not appear to have polar ice caps and may have a temperate climate around the globe.
The Star Wars planet is named after J.R.R. Tolkien's Endor, the Elvish name of Middle-earth, probably an allusion to the similarity between Ewoks and Hobbits, or the moon's tall foliage and the mellyrn of Lothlórien.
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Endor's Forest Moon and the Galactic Civil War
The Endorian moon played a vital role in the Galactic Civil War and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. It was here that the Rebel Alliance's greatest victory over the Galactic Empire occurred during the unforgettable Battle of Endor. Image:PlanetEndor2.jpg On this moon was the Imperial Second Death Star's shield generator, just waiting for Rebel forces to destroy. It was guarded by the Empire's scout troopers however the Rebels formed an accidental, but essential alliance with the small, furry inhabitants of the forests. These aggressive creatures called Ewoks - although primitive in technology - knew the land better than either the Empire or Rebels and helped ambush Imperial AT-STs and get Rebels to the shield base.
Once the Rebel Alliance took down the Death Star II's shield, the colossal space station was rendered helpless and X-wing starfighters were able to annihilate it completely. Moments before this final part of the Battle of Endor, the tyrannical Imperial leader Darth Vader died as well as the evil Emperor himself. It was a spectacular victory for the Rebels and would bring about the downfall of the Galactic Empire and bring about the start of the New Republic.
There is no official information about the shield generator during the Clone Wars, but some sources says that a young Jedi Knight was on the sanctuary moon during the last days of the war. He may have been there with a squad of Clone Troopers, while they where building a so-called "bunker" for the Republic leaders, where they could hide if the war had to make them escape. The clones may have kept some secret objective for the Jedi, just like the 501st Legion did on Mygeeto in Star Wars Battlefront II, and were really on a secret mission for Emperor Palpatine, of some kind. Or the clones may have just made a bunker, but at the time of the Death Star II it was of no use, and then it was made into a shield generator for the gigantic space station.
Endor Holocaust
The Endor Holocaust is a devastation of the forest moon of Endor which is theorized to have happened after the second Death Star was destroyed (in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi) by the impact of falling debris. It has not been established to have occurred in any canon sources, but has been proposed as fanon by some fans as a scientifically inevitable consequence of the events portrayed.<ref name="Endor Holocaust">Template:Cite web</ref> Others dispute the theory that such a disaster occurred.<ref name="endortruth">Template:Cite web</ref> This debate continues sporadically among some Star Wars fans on the Internet.
The likeliest explanation in the real world is merely that the producer Lucas did not realize the likely consequences of such a massive explosion so nearby, or chose to ignore these effects for the sake of the plot. Evidence throughout the body of Star Wars work have been interpreted both for and against the holocaust theory. The complexity of the discussion is compounded by the different levels of Star Wars canon, and the ways different groups resolve contradictions. For example, in one of the Star Wars Tales comics,Template:Citation needed an Imperial veteran of Endor makes an apparent reference to the holocaust theory, after telling the story of his unit's trouble with the Ewoks in a bar. Another character dismisses it as a myth, saying that most of the Death Star's mass was obliterated in the explosion, and that the Rebels "took care of the rest." Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy describes how the Rebels managed to use shields and tractor beams to protect their strike team on the moon of Endor, though the defence of the rest of the moon is not mentioned.