Pernicar is a hot, arid world of baking desert sand, steaming volcanic rock fields, bubbling mudflats and smoking lava flows. Average daily temperatures are a mere ten or so degrees below the boiling point of water, ensuring that what little surface water there is, usually the result of the infrequent but violent desert storms, quickly evaporates. The clear and cloudless sky provides scant protection from the scorching rays of the sun, which ultraviolet radiation would be harmful to most forms of life. This combination of heat and UV radiation has forced most of Pernicar's native wildlife to become burrowers or inhabitants of the large cave networks that riddle the planet's crust. There the animals bide their time, waiting for the planet's thirty-hour-long night to start.

During the day, anyone foolish enough to be wandering the surface would be hard-pressed to find a single sign of life. After dark, however, the starlit night comes alive with the hoots, whistles, growls and cries of a million different species of insect and insect eater. In fact, studies have shown that Pernicar's thorny cactus jungles may be home to as many different species of insect and insectivore as any wet, temperate world. Larger predators such as sand panthers emerge from their daytime refuges to hunt the herds of browsers that scrape a living from the prickly jungles, while small herds of feral bantha and eopies roam the barrens. The cover of darkness allows these animals to hunt, feed and mate in temperatures as much as forty degrees cooler than during the day.

Like its sister worlds in the Hoth's Brand system, Gale and Othone, Pernicar is named for a lost Jedi hero of the New Sith War a thousand years ago - in this case, the Jedi Master Pernicar, who was a close friend of the leader of the Army of Light, Lord Hoth. Master Pernicar was lost in battle with the Sith just before the conclusion of the Ruusan Campaign. The current settlers of the planet, mainly itinerant moisture farmers and miners working the rich seams of minerals care little for such history, although conversely, there are any number of historical clubs in the dusty cities that dot the planet's surface. Recent cooperation with the other planets in the system has eased the harsh life of the natives somewhat, with the introduction of more modern cooling technology, environmental domes and such, but life on Pernicar is still tough and breeds a hardy type of person.