Bases & Space Stations

Massassi Base On Yavin 4

The Massassi Outpost housed several squadrons' worth of X and Y-wing starfighters in a cavernous hangar bay built into the temple's first level. The dank interiors were converted into control stations and barracks. The uppermost level of the temple held a huge throne room that served as a ceremonial chamber for Alliance dignitaries.

Thousands of years after the Great Hyperspace War and ancient Sith, the Rebel Alliance scouted Yavin 4, and Sullustan naturalist Dr'uun Unnh named many of the temples in the so-called Massassi site. These included the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, the Palace of the Woolamander, and the Great Temple that would house the Rebel base. It is a colossal structure, roughly pyramidal in shape, ringed by smaller buildings.

Internally, the Great Temple was divided into four levels, each representing a step of the ziggurat—each level was thus larger in floorplan than the one above, but all were outfitted on broadly similar plans with small cells, chambers and corridors around a large central space. 

When the Rebel Alliance set-up their base, the outer surface of the Massassi Temple was left as untouched as possible. Interior chambers, however, were roughly hewn by the Rebels prior to being filled in with chambers and a main central lift cluster. Rebel engineers also reinforced the temple's original stone floors with ferrocrete. The base was powered by a generating station composed of stolen Imperial Star Destroyer reactor components two kilometers from the temple.

The topmost level, was almost entirely taken up by the Grand Audience Chamber, used as a ceremonial hall by the Alliance garrison and later employed by the Jedi Academy as a teaching space. Under the Alliance, the next level contained officers' quarters, and the base's security, communications and medical facilities, with the central room serving as a command center; the Jedi would later convert this level entirely to accommodation and storage. On the level below, the central chamber was outfitted by the Alliance as the War Room, later re-named as the Strategy Center by the Jedi: this was where the Alliance commanders coordinated the fighter attack on the first Death Star. The surrrounding rooms on this level, used as stores and technical workshops by the Alliance, were converted by the Jedi to meeting-rooms, communications and computing bays, kitchens and dining halls. 

The lowest level of the temple was used by the Rebels and the Jedi alike as a vast hangar bay to store starfighters and other vehicles; there was also a second hangar beneath, plus cellars and catacombs that remained largely unused in both phases of reoccupation. Access to the hangar was by a set of ground-level blast-doors, opening out onto a landing pad. 

During the Jedi period, the average ground level around the structure's exterior had risen, so that the main entrance was at War Room level, and many of the students thought of the entire hangar complex as being essentially underground - although the hangar doors must have remained accessible, the area in front of them no longer served as the main landing zone. The entrance faced a clearing, while a river now flowed close to the temple along the other two sides.

The Massassi base was the site of repeated Imperial harassment after the Battle of Yavin. The Imperials hid a secret launch base in the heart of the gas giant. From there, they staged surprise TIE fighter raids. Luke Skywalker managed to destroy the launch base, drawing the ire of the House of Tagge family of nobles.

Shortly thereafter, the Empire established a blockade in the Yavin system. A crippled TIE bomber crashed into one of the unoccupied buildings of the Massassi site, and released the Sith night beast from its millennia-old sleep. Again, it was Luke that saved the day, as he lured the dangerous creature into an abandoned transport, and sent the night beast into space.

With the help of the Aquaris Freeholders and the Mon Calamari, most of the Rebels were able to bypass the Imperial blockade of the system. During the final evacuation, General Dodonna stayed behind to detonate a series of concussion charges meant to destroy the base. He was believed killed in the blast, but was later recovered from an Imperial prison.

The blast did destroy some of the sensitive Alliance computers, but did little to affect the actual temples themselves. Again, Yavin 4 was plunged into obscurity as the Alliance moved on. Several scouting parties from the Fernandin Scouting Expedition were sent to the moon to see if colonization was possible, but nothing ever came of that.

After the defeat of the Empire at the Battle of Endor, the New Republic re-established a temporary base in the Great Temple for their Senate Planetary Intelligence Network, or SPIN. A few years later, Luke Skywalker, now a Jedi Master, returned to Yavin Four to set up a training facility for a new generation of Jedi. The Jedi praxeum was set up in the Great Temple. Drawn to the Jedi was the ancient spirit of Exar Kun, who possessed several of Luke's students. Nearly killing Skywalker, the spirit of Kun challenged all the Jedi, who combined their Force abilities to banish Kun's presence.

Though the Jedi Academy withstood many a crisis, including attacks from Imperial warlords and the Shadow Academy, the massive structures of the Massassi site were eventually destroyed by invading Yuuzhan Vong.

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