Haruun Kal

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Climate:
  Warm, humid

• Terrain:
  Jungle, poisonous valleys, volcanoes

• 

From the Expanded Universe

The combatants of the Clone Wars consisted of more than clone troopers without families and battle droids without feeling. On many worlds, the war overlapped local conflicts, fanning flames of deep-rooted aggression even higher. The Confederacy and the Republic both exploited local wars to secure contentious worlds, and bolstered indigenous combatants with supplies and expertise. On Haruun Kal, the Clone Wars made a terrible civil war even worse.

Haruun Kal is the sole planet of the Al'Har system. The name, coined by its indigenous human population, translates into "Above the Clouds." The apt description stems from the choking, heavier-than-air toxic gases that seep from the planet's innumerable active volcanoes. These gases collect in pockets and valleys; only in the highlands that pierce the poisonous cloud envelope can oxygen-breathing life survive.

Though habitable, the world is hardly welcoming. The few landmasses that jut from the low clouds are covered with hostile jungle. The dense foliage is thick with disease-carrying insects, parasites and persistent fungi capable of crippling machinery and people alike. Nonetheless, people came to Haruun Kal.

The indigents are the Korunnai. It is uncertain how these humans came to call the jungles of Haruun Kal home. The Jedi Council had studied the Korun tribes, extrapolating that the tribes were perhaps the descendents of a crashed Jedi spacecraft. This theory helped answer a peculiar mystery: all the Korun could touch the Force. They needed to; the jungle was so hostile, that a being not able to sense the dangers of the dark would surly perish. The Korun developed a respect for the jungle -- the harsh ecology factored into their culture and definitions of justice. They developed a nomadic, tribal government, staying alive by following the traveling herds of grassers through the jungle, protected by their Force-bonded akk dogs.

Offworlders came to Haruun Kal for the lucrative secrets to be hacked from the jungle. Spice and exotic woods commanded attractive prices on the galactic market, and Haruun Kal is the sole source of the galaxy's thyssel bark, portaak leaf, jinsol, tyruun and lammas wood. The outlanders came to the jungles seeking fortune. What they found, quite often, was death. The jungle prospectors -- jups, as they were called -- encroached into the Korun grounds, and hostilities would follow. The Korun grew to hate the offworlders, or Balawai, and grew to be hated in turn.

Pelek Baw, the only Balawai settlement of real permanence, became the sole government on Haruun Kal. At the start of the Clone Wars, the Balawai government sided with the Confederacy of Independent Systems as a means of dodging a Republic investigation into the treatment of the Korunnai natives. The Confederacy would arm the Balawai militia in exchange for use of their spaceport at Pelek Baw. The jups became an extension of that militia, serving as irregulars, carrying bloodshed deeper into the jungles.

The Republic wanted to hold onto Haruun Kal. The planet's strategic placement on the Gervarno Loop made it too valuable to lose. But troops were scarce in the growing war, so the Jedi Council dispatched a single Jedi to train the Korun natives as anti-government partisans. Jedi Master Depa Billaba came to lead the Upland Liberation Front in war against the Balawai. She was forever scarred by the experience.

The war on Haruun Kal was messy and personal. Years of bloodshed and hostility between the Korunnai and the Balawai led to gruesome massacres of civilians and non-combatants on both sides. The Force-strong Korun fought without restraint, lashing out with vengeance and bloodlust forbidden by the Jedi Code. Depa learned that the strict rules of Coruscant collapsed when faced with the chaos of a jungle war. She too turned her back on the Code, and fell to the darkness of the battlefield.

Disturbing accounts that Billaba was behind the slaughter of civilians brought Mace Windu back to Haruun Kal, his homeworld. In his trek to find Billaba and bring her back to Coruscant, Mace received an unsettlingly close look at the grim realities of war. He tried to stay true to the Jedi Code, though he felt the temptation of abandon, of letting go and slipping into the rage and insanity of warfare.

Testament to his resolve as a Jedi Master, Mace emerged from Haruun Kal true to the Jedi code, though he would be troubled by the questions raised by that jungle war for the remainder of his days.