Barely the size of a large moon, riven by earthquakes, partly covered in continuously flowing fields of roiling magma, and with an atmosphere so thin as to be non-existent, one could hardly find a world more inimical to sentient life than Nulan II. With average daily temperatures in excess of two hundred fifty standard degrees and a day-night cycle of only seven standard hours, life outside the planet’s environmentally sealed, foundation-stabilised cities is all but impossible unless one is in a protected vehicle or starship.

Originally developed as a prison world where the long-forgotten pirate lord who developed the system could keep his hostages and dispose of undesirables, the discovery of useful mineral deposits sealed the world’s fate. Labour camps sprang up all across the low mountain ranges and wide, rocky plains, and in these bleak settlements, prisoners worked until they dropped, then received rudimentary healthcare, and repeated the cycle until their inevitable deaths from overwork. In the ten centuries since, deep mines have been bored into the rocky substrate in pursuit of the world’s mineral wealth. At times, this led to terrible tragedies, as exhausted workers sometimes bore into lava pockets or detonated mining explosives in unstable areas, leading to massive cave-ins.

In more recent times, forced labour by sentient prisoners has given way to droid labour in all but the most backward mining camps. The system’s current government still uses some of the old prison complexes for their original purpose, although most of the old detention centres have been replaced by mining and ore-processing infrastructure, as well as facilities to transport the ore off-world.